Talk:Christian influences on the Islamic world
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![]() | A fact from Christian influences on the Islamic world appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 30 November 2009 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
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Cause and Effect
editThere are examples here of Islamic influence on Christian buildings - such as the remaking of the Hagia Sophia. Wouldnt this be Islamic influence on a Christian building?
Christian Sabbath Observance
editCould someone please cite or remove the statement about most Islamic countries observing Sunday as a non-working day. As a resident of Egypt, I was under the impression that most Islamic countries observe Friday as Jum3, and the weekend then encompasses Friday and Saturday. Sunday is the beginning of the workweek. If this sort of goes ignored, I think it would probably be best to remove this claim as it seems as odd, and poorly written, as the article itself. Michael Sheflin (talk) 16:51, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
- I agree Maen.khaled (talk) 09:43, 28 February 2023 (UTC)
Broad problems
editThere is a broader problem with this article: it refers to Christian (an already nebulous amalgam of religious and not ethnic groups) influences on Islam (also religious and not ethnic groups). Hence the language section is somewhat questionable as one would have to prove "Christian" linguistic influences on the Arabic language prior to the compilation of the Quran to prove, for instance, that Syriac sahedo influenced the word shahid.
Since shahid is in the Quran, and this proof would speak to a time in which Arabic was not written, this statement cannot be verified. I cannot check the citation but I would imagine the statement made here may not be the actual statement made in that book - ie it probably suggest that they are cognates. Arabic as a language far predates linguists' abilities to trace other linguistic influences. Additionally, while Arabic is attested in Syria-Palestine region fairly early (AD) it is inappropriate to trace that influence to the beginning of Islam - as it did not begin there.
Additionally, this article is not concerned with Christians in Arabia, where Hadith and the Quran both mention some more direct influences. The article in general should be deleted and the information on the Hagia Sophia etc. should be combined with another article. As it stands now this article is effectively a poor attempt to point out broad cross-cultural similarities under the disingenuous heading of "influence." Influence requires the ability to show that influence, so the article fails at its own proof. Michael Sheflin (talk) 10:57, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
Crusaders didn't invent the pointed arch, did they??
editI thought the Crusaders brought the pointed "Gothic" arch back from their travels in the Middle East, not the other way round (as this article suggests)? Can anyone confirm/correct this article? Thanks, AJ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.199.242.116 (talk) 22:07, 29 August 2012 (UTC)
Wrong title
editThe article deals with Christian influences on the Islamic world, and NOT on Islam (= religion). On that topic it only has one restricted section, prayer & worship. Apart from fundamentalist Muslims (direct revelation from God), the scholalry consensus is that Islam very much does draw most of its material from Judaism and Christianity, plus local pre-Islamic Arab traditions. This article doesn't stand on firm feet, as the object of the article and its title don't overlap. Define the object in the lead, and then adapt the content. If it means creating two separate articles, the better. Cheers, Arminden (talk) 13:15, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
Wiki Education assignment: Islamic Art
editThis article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 23 August 2022 and 2 December 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Sdolphin02 (article contribs).
— Assignment last updated by Sdolphin02 (talk) 16:43, 14 November 2022 (UTC)
Shows theories as facts and with no Islamic reply
editThe article is broadly listing the theories that have in common the idea that islam was a human creation, you can read that in obvious text or this is implied in others.
What was not made clear to the reader is that all of these points are theories by some western scholars or orientalists, who -at some times- base their theory on very weak links - or wrong interpretation- to syriac sources.
Islam as a religion was almost stated here a copier of older religions, this is misleading and the article should be revised to clear this.
in addition to this, we don't read the islamic position of some the points, for example fastening; as in islam religion it is clearly stated that fastening was forced by God to all previous messengers. Maen.khaled (talk) 09:42, 28 February 2023 (UTC)
Ongoing POV editing and attribution problems
editI believe we have problems deriving from a single editor, currently editing as H20346, who appears to have been editing previously under IPs since March 2023 and seems to be aggressively pushing a POV rather than generally improving the article. See this IP's history and their user talk page, and this one, all of whom made similar edits to this article. They've affected many sections and I've noted several problems so far:
- The first IP already inserted copyrighted material in March 2023 which has been deleted and H20346 inserted copyrighted material at Muslim conquest of Spain which was removed as well, and they've also been copying material from other Wikipedia article without attribution, so there's a strong chance that there could be other inappropriate copy-pasting in this article, given the volume of edits.
- I've just removed an instance of clearly deliberate POV wording ("the more primitive societies of the Islamic invaders and the highly Cultured civilizations of the Christian Roman Empire and the Zoroastrian Persian Empire") that they inserted here, which also misleadingly attributed the statement of one very polemic author to multiple scholars.
- They've massively expanded the "language" section, which goes out of its way to list various possible instances of Arabic words having origins in other languages. This is not entirely their doing; there was a small Language section before that which mentioned a possible loanword. But the section is now mostly trivial to this topic; language is not religion, and Syriac and Aramaic are not equivalent to "Christian". Loanwords and cognates are a regular fact of any linguistic history and Arabic, a Semitic language, would necessarily have etymologies related to other Semitic languages.
- Something that might actually be helpful would be, for example, influences of Christian texts on Islamic texts or discourse. Currently, only the paragraph containing a quote by Erwin Schräf seems to qualify, but it's explained bizarrely and includes claims that the cited source doesn't state.
These are only the problems I noticed from a quick spot-check, which suggests there may be more issues. I'm encourage editors to keep an eye on ongoing and past edits. If the problems continue to mount, this may be an issue for WP:ANI. R Prazeres (talk) 18:43, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
- Addendum: And I've found yet another copyright violation: this edit, except for the last few words, is a direct copy from this source (pp.59-60), which is not cited. It may need another revdelete. The edit summary also borders on being a personal attack against the previous editor. R Prazeres (talk) 18:55, 15 May 2023 (UTC)