User talk:Altarbey: Difference between revisions

Genocide

I have deleted that page because you are violating our policies and guideline (both topic and etiquette). It doesn't matter if it was against Christians, Jews or Muslims, we're not going to put up with genocide denial on this site. I'm sorry if that displeases you but that is the way it is. The Armenian Genocide is a fact. --Sahabah (talk) 04:57, 4 March 2013 (PST)

Sadly, yes I seem to have violated "They are not there for debating the content of the article or for general attacks on the site or users of the site.". And I need not violate it further by adding "saying "genocide is a fact" a millon times does not make it a fact, without proof" or such.

Anyway, for the article, it has nothing related to islam or jihad. Armenian deportation is due to separatist armenians revolting by russians' support and order was given by the germans, not the ottomans. Ottomans were not even involved in the ww1 for jihad. either arabs or other muslims did not take ottoman's side in ww1. That article is nothing but a collection of non-related situations or stories, stitched together by some side details to make up a claim. Sadly this is also "a debate on article's content", so how one should inform about the incorrectness of the contents? Altarbey (talk) 07:16, 4 March 2013 (PST)

The Wikipedia article says the Armenian Genocide was "the Ottoman government's systematic extermination of its minority Armenian subjects". This is established history. What you are saying is not. What you are saying is akin to denying the Holocaust against Jews or the Srebrenica Genocide against Muslims. You can mock me all you want with the "saying "genocide is a fact" a millon times does not make it a fact" thing, but genocide denial is not even worthy of debating. And of course Islam played some part in it. I've heard the same thing said about some of the deadly riots against Christians and Hindus in Indonesia. People claiming it's an "ethnic" thing and so on. But that fails to explain why the murdering, raping rioters destroy churches and temples, yet leave houses with "I'm a Muslim" etc., untouched. Race, nationality, ethnicity, etc., is certainly a big factor in many of these situations, but, like in Sudan, it's religion that gives them justification and the assurance that what they are doing is right. If there is a genuine query about a mistake, we welcome them. That's mainly there because we get a lot of time wasters. In any case, that's a published book so we cant edit its content.

Indonesian "islamic" riots do have nothing in common with "deportation of minorities that were in alliances with enemy forces". Recently discovered Report of Brigadier General Bolhovitinov (11th december 1915)[Brigadier General Leonid Bolhovitinov's Report, 19 15, Russian Military History Archives (RGVIA) fond2100,listl,folder557,p.303-307] uncovers the details what armenian riots' and gangs have done. That's why Friedrich Bronsart von Schellendorf who was the chief of the General Staff of the Ottoman field army due to agreement on being allies with Germany in ww1, orders the deportation of the Armenians in (Huberta von Voss (Hrsg.): Porträt einer Hoffnung. Die Armenier. Lebensbilder aus aller Welt. Schiler, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-89930-087-4, S. 101.) All the details aside, the main point is, this has nothing to do with Jihad or islam, for Ottomans were not the ones ordering the "deportation or else". "Systematic extermination" is just a dramatic naming of the 20-30 years up to 1916 in behalf of the Armenians.

I'm not in denial of anything, i just don't exaggerate the single sided sad stories and don't buy the pumped up numbers, since i've been hearing these stories for all my life. Let me give you an example, one of many similar others: Imam Atif of İskilip supported Greek and English forces who invaded almost everywhere in Anatolia right after ww1. He wrote fatwas against national forces, supporting enemies during Liberation War of Turkey. He was caught, hanged after trial for treason. Today, an islamist government occupies the state, and Atif suddenly became a poor victim of "godless" nationalists, who was nothing but a sweet man of faith. Sorry, being a Turk and Anatolian breed, I'm full of sad stories, i don't buy more without proof. All humans are the same. They want more. When they fail to have more, their failure becomes a sad story if told by sufficiently high number of mouths.

Aside all the details, my main argument is: "this has no relation with religion or jihad, the writer made up a claim from unrelated details" Altarbey (talk) 11:10, 5 March 2013 (PST)

Altarbey

About this [1], all the sources are present here [2]. You can look at all the sources over there. Would you say all of the sources are incorrect? Its well-documented.

Also that series of pages is attributed to an author, that's why so its like an essay. We have different policies for essays. You should separate yourself from this event in history as you're not responsible for it, so there is no reason to get national/patriotic about it. Many times the governments or authorities of the countries we live in do bad things and that doesn't have to be taken personally as it was not in our control.

The majority of our site focuses on Islam. Anyway, again the sources are all mentioned on Wikipedia, you can check each of them. --Axius (talk) 05:06, 4 March 2013 (PST)

If one should talk about Ottoman's genocidal behaviour, Turks should be the ones. Ottomans were nothing but a parasite feeding on Turks, almost wiping out Alawi Turks, totally wiped out Baktashis, messed up thousands of years of Anatolian culture pushing sunni islam into people's throats and guts, sentencing them to ages of darkness.

Yet I'm not taking any side on this issue. I'm informing that the content of the article has no proof whatsoever, just a popular topic for people love dramas, combined with side details to make up a claim. What made me fiery is, seing the "sceptical" people acting almost exactly the same as the religious ones, only the topic changes. "Everyone says so, there are many articles written by armenians or people fed by armenian loobysts so it must be true" is the same thing as "there are 1.5 billion muslims/ 2.0 billion christians etc, so god is real, my religion is real".

How much i don't like ottomans, yet they had one of the most detailed military records, which also continued with Turkey's army. Why not take a trip to Turkey's records, instead of "my grandma was sad because of bad turks" stories?

I've visited some of the online references from the wikipedia page, some ny times articles talking about blood baths, no pictures. some of them combining 1908-09 adana killings into 1915-16, some are just "yeah it happened" type of writings. some are the late liberal, romantic turkish writers feeding on sad stories, some sites dedicated to genocide, showing random pictures of miserable situations, yet no 1.5 millon, not even 15 people in them claiming that those are armenians or turks according to the situation.

Killings happen, rage happens, some knuckleheads might go berserk on some groups for some reason. But systemic, programmed genocide... Proof is all needed, nothing more, nothing less. And that is all i will say about this article.

Sad to see people being selectively sceptical on some issues depending on emotional reasons. What happened to scientific approach? Why accepting the whole story, without looking for proofs? Altarbey (talk) 07:16, 4 March 2013 (PST)

Most "skeptics" don't indulge in genocide denial. That's usually done by wing-nuts. I know Axius likes to discuss, but as I've said above, genocide denial shouldn't even be entertained here. --Sahabah (talk) 07:59, 4 March 2013 (PST)

Hi Altarbey, nothing you or I say about the genocide is relevant if it is contradicting historians. We are not subject-matter experts on this issue. Me and you are just an anonymous username on the internet. Therefore I'm not going to respond to your statements about the genocide and try to refute them. I'm not going to debate about them.

You can read this page on Wikipedia too: Armenian Genocide denial (wikipedia). There are sources mentioned for that as well.

One of the sources mentioned for the large number of deaths is this:

Frank Robert Chalk; Kurt Jonassohn; Institut montréalais des études sur le génocide (10 September 1990). The history and sociology of genocide: analyses and case studies. Yale University Press. pp. 270–. ISBN 978-0-300-04446-1. Retrieved 26 February 2012.

Here's another:

^ The German Foreign Ministry operative, Ernst Jackh, estimated that 200,000 Armenians were killed and a further 50,000 expelled from the provinces during the Hamidian unrest. French diplomats placed the figures to 250,000 killed. The German pastor Johannes Lepsius was more meticulous in his calculations, counting the deaths of 88,000 Armenians and the destruction of 2,500 villages, 645 churches and monasteries, and the plundering of hundreds of churches, of which 328 were converted into mosques.

Can you bring a source that refutes the above? Remember I don't want your opinion. I want facts (if you have them). Do you believe in things based on facts and references? I do. Like I said, you were not responsible for this event, so you should not be defensive about it.

There are countless other sources. So what if you cant find a lot of pictures? Pictures dont exist for a lot of things and that doesn't mean they didnt happen. 100s and 1000s of historians are not going to get together and falsely make up a large collection of facts. You should be able to think logically and acknowledge that when 80-100% of academic sources confirm a fact, you should accept that. Unless you can present a collection of reliable facts that contradicts and refutes those academic sources, you have nothing to claim. If you have a problem with the genocide, this is not the site to debate about it. You can try Wikipedia or internet forums.

Again, the majority of our website is about Islam and not about the Armenian genocide. Editors can disagree on certain issues and that doesn't mean they cannot work towards a common goal, which is to make this website better (where it matters, which is: the main topics of this site and these are the Core articles linked on the left such as Women, Miracles and so on). If you can, you should ignore this topic and continue with your task of translating the articles. If you cannot do that, that will be sad as you will not helping Turkish people learn about Islam, all because of one series of pages on a certain topic (where the consensus of academics and historians is clear and there are only minor disagreements, if any). We'll be deleting this page after the discussion is over. --Axius (talk) 14:50, 4 March 2013 (PST)

This will be a long read, so my argument is: "those stories has nothing related to islam or jihad, just a bunch of unrelated details. binding those stories to religion is also hiding the human greed from eyes, which does the same job as religion"

I don't need to bring any sources to refute the above, for it already refutes itself. 88K to 250K killed is the same as "i have 3 to 9 kids". When it comes to human casualties, a very wide range means "it's just a pumped up story". When it comes to numbers, this might be a good collection to show the real numbers of populations depending on the reports of foreign observers, then one can add or substract more accurately.

And this still has hothing to do with Jihad or islam, and even it has nothing to do with the so called genocide(1915-16 deportation) either. What you're talking about is Hamidian unrest, which is an act of Abdul"hamid"'s Hamidian Battalions built up of local Kurds to set a barrier between russia and ottoman empire, and stop the armenian terror, which sped up after Armenians's Independence project aired in Berlin Conference in 18th June 1878. The date of hamidian unrest is 1894-1896. 20 years before the deportation or the so called genocide. Also which is referred as a part of systematic extermination like all failed separatist ethnic riots that occupied years.

People seem to think that ww1 came out of the blue, everyone was sick of their borders, and thought "hey how about we have a world wide war? huh? i know, right?". Economical and industrial power hunger lead to war. Religion, like supporting the ethnic minorities for independence(armenians, kurds, rums, greeks etc.), was just another tool in the war. But unlike other tools, religion did almost no impact at all. Picture of wilhelm and abdulhamid shows that German emperor Wilhelm II as the protector and friend of muslims for the one after him is Abdulhamid II Ottoman emperor and the "khalifa of muslims". Against all propaganda for all those years, most "muslim arabs" fought against the ottomans in ww1.

Nobody suddenly goes berserk on others in numbers of hundreds of thousands in the name of religion. And no, there has never been a war in the name of religion. All were in the name of gaining the power of authority, painted religion. Muhammad cut all those heads, not because they did not accept his god, but because they did not accept muhammad's authority as him being the voice of that god.

What religion hides is the inhuman behavior of imperialism, and economic dominance. Relating everything to religion or Jihad is the same as saying "your hand hit me, your hand's bad". Religion is just a powerful bullshit that covers the underlying desires of humans. And i rest and end my case here. All the details aside, I really don't care of people crying over sad stories whether they are Turks or of the rest, none of those stories either has anything to do with religions or Jihads or never had. Relating up those stories to religions does not help in any way, since humans are the ones that made up religions so that they could mess up human life to gain more power easily. This had gone too far, taking up more and more time. And you most probably had many of these arguments. So no need to take it further. what i say is at the last two paragraphs, or in short "those stories has nothing related to islam or jihad, binding those stories to religion is also hiding the human greed from eyes".

I'll just be adding some translations to articles from time to time, to enrich the online resources in Turkish uncovering religion. Altarbey (talk) 11:10, 5 March 2013 (PST)

Ok. We can agree to disagree on that and a few other things, that is fine with me. Sorry about not responding to your points here but you can discuss the topic of this genocide and other issues with those who are willing to do so and you can reuse part of this discussion in those other debates (if you have them).

About the translations, I would really like a translation of 72 Virgins. There are numerous articles but this is a high traffic page and one of my favorites and an important topic. I hope you are translating word-for word. Let me know if there are any other issues.

Asides from that 72 V article, feel free to translate any other articles which you think are important and should be read by Turkish people. --Axius (talk) 16:46, 5 March 2013 (PST)

@Axius: I'm translating word-for-word. Some of the hadiths and ayats need more precise translations than word-for-word interpretation, so i need to copy them from external sources of well known and trusted Turkish interpretors. But the online resources where i find these translations are not under edu domains. How can/should i cite those resources? Altarbey (talk) 01:22, 6 March 2013 (PST)

Give me the links to those sources and I'll check them out. --Axius (talk) 04:50, 6 March 2013 (PST)

I'm using two sites for tafsirs and hadiths. Kuranmeali.org (Qur'an's tafsir) is the main site i use for tafsirs, for example: Ahzab 53 on İslamda Cinsel Ayrımcılık. Kuranmeali shows each ayat in it's own page, where well known scholars/interpretors's translations for that ayat are listed to provide more understanding which also helps the reader compare the tafsirs by accuracy. I mainly use Abdülbaki Gölpınarlı or Elmalılı Hamdi Yazır's tafsirs, since their tafsirs are much more accurate, and older than the others'. Newer tafsirs are mostly tailored according to scientific achievements to create an illusion of Kuran being ultimate source of information, containing all the scientific facts.

Ihya.org contains the direct copies of both kütub-u sitte and bukhari's sahih. For example [3] is exact translation of Sahih Bukhari 4:52:250

Ok. I'll look at those sites and see if we can make templates for them that can be used in Turkish articles, just like we have templates for Quran, hadith in english. --Axius (talk) 15:36, 6 March 2013 (PST)

(outdented) Here is it. For Turkish Quran, use: {{Kuran|2|105}}, which produces: Kur'an 2:105 The link of Kuran redirects to the English Quran for now but later when/if there's a Turkish page on Quran, we can fix that link to go over there instead. Looks like 'Kuran' is the Turkish way of Quran (which is the english way). Let me know if its something else and we can rename the template. For the hadith templates:

For Bukhari (Buhari in Turkish?), I made a template : {{Buhari|763}}, which makes this: Sahih Buhari 763. But this is a draft. Templates have to be made in a way where the input is universal/standardized. This makes sure we can adjust the output later if there are any changes, and we wont have to change all the texts where the template has been used. A good template design is important to prevent problems in the future. For example the input for the Kuran template is standardized/universal (surah|verse, like the English one).

So, do you know of any Turkish sites that have the Bukhari hadith in the same format we have the English one? For the example you gave, the input number is 763 and the english version of that is 4:52:250. So is there a Turkish website that has the english parameters? If you do know of other sites let me know. I would like to look at those. Also correct me if I'm wrong: 'Buhari' is the way of saying Bukhari. Thats why I used Buhari in the turkish template.

If Ihya.org's Buhari collection is the only one available on the internet, we'll see how we can use this one.

For the other Hadith sources also, are there other sources for that, or is this website the only one that has them? I'm not faimiliar with Sitte. We can have one template for Sitte hadith, or one for each type (Fasillari, Konulari, Ravileri, Hadisleri, etc). It depends on whether other websites exists having these same hadith. Let me know. If this Ihya.org is the only one having the Sitte hadith, then we can work from there.

Yea thats it for now. Atleast the Quran template is working and ready. --Axius (talk) 19:10, 6 March 2013 (PST)

Unfortunately all Turkish hadith sites seem to be using the same or similar sequential(1-n) order. If it helps, i can download and reformat the hadiths to be inserted into wikimedia in bulk if it's possible, but i don't know how this (4:52:250) numbering is formed (book numbers, volumes etc.), so even if wikiislam holds it's own Turkish hadiths database, it'll still be in the same sequential order.Altarbey (talk) 11:37, 7 March 2013 (PST)

Kütub-u Sitte is the collection of the six most trusted hadith books (sahih buhari, muslim, tirmisi (tirmidhi?), ebu davud, ibni mace) (kütub-u = books of, sitte=six). Altarbey (talk) 13:07, 7 March 2013 (PST)

Sorry if I'm not clear in my explanations. Its the first time I'm trying to do this for a language I dont know.

If all of those sites have the same types of pages, then we're in good shape. I did do a google search however and I couldnt find another version of Buhari, so I'll let you do that search since I'm not familiar with the language.

We're not able to copy the hadiths to our site (although I should copy the sites and make a backup if possible on my PC, just in case) due to copyright issues. It would be a lot of work for you also to copy/reformat the hadiths. So we just want to quote the ones we need and link to them, like we do for english.

The reason why its critical to make good templates in the beginning is that after they are used in thousands of places, we want those links to keep working if a website goes down.

So what I mean is this. When you say this:

For example http://hadis.ihya.org/buhari/konu/763.html is exact translation of Sahih Bukhari 4:52:250

See the '763' in the URL? The way we'll use the template is {{template|763}}, and it will make a link to that page. If that site does offline or changes its URL (it happened to our Quran/hadith template a couple of times), I just changed the template and the links were working again. The reason was the same structure was present in other websites as well.

So are there other websites that have the same Buhakri collection and they have a '763' URL that will take us to the same hadith? For example I give the example of the Quran:

• http://www.kuranmeali.org/2/bakara_suresi/105.ayet/kurani_kerim_mealleri.aspx
• http://www.kurandakihidayet.com/2/bakara_suresi/105.ayet/kurani_kerim_mealleri.aspx

Note they have the same 2/105 system but they are different websites. If one site goes down, I can change the template to go to the other site and all the links will work again.

In short give me all the links you can find for the Turkish Bukhari collection and I'll check them out to see. I dont know how the Sitte will work but we will work on that also. I dont understand the system for the Sitte hadith on that site. Looks like one page has multiple hadith. Give me links to various sites for Sitte hadith also so I can look at all of them to see if there's a common structure. --Axius (talk) 18:44, 7 March 2013 (PST)

I understand the template schema and how it works. Problem with the turkish hadiths, that are available online is there is no exact online copy of the bukhari or others, but instead there are classification works of devotees. Since most of the trusted hadith books already contain the same hadiths, and they each even contain the same hadiths in several subsections again and again many times, these devotees have classified and regrouped the hadiths. For example: Sahih Buhari 763 , Sahih Bukhari 4:52:250, this are the same. Bukhari's sahih said to have 9082 hadiths, but the number of unique hadiths are said to be 2761 or so. Buhari's sahih has 97 books, usc.edu has 93. It's almost impossible to find exact match between online sources for hadiths, especially when they are not originated from the same source(same translator). That's why i offered to upload a classified version of the hadiths to wikiislam. Muhaddis.org has done this classification for sitte and makes this data freely distributable.

Thanks for the Zip link. I saved that text file to my computer.

So if all the sites have different naming systems, we can go with any of the sites and it doesnt matter, like Ihya.

Glad you know about the template system. A template is good, if when its clicked, it either goes to a separate page for that reference (like the new Turkish Quran template) Kur'an 2:105, or it goes to the individual section like here: Sahih Bukhari 4:52:250. In both cases, the reader can verify the source easily.

We have different options:

1. Using the current template model and assuming the hadith will stay in Ihya.org. You use only the hadith that you need. If there are multiple hadiths per page, we can link to that page but the reader will just have to search for the relevant hadith themselves. This is easiest option.
2. Copy the needed hadith to our site on a separate Hadith page and our template references that page instead of an external site (our hadith page will still reference an external site). In this system, multiple Hadiths will be on a single page but we can verify each hadith separately, as the link will auto-scroll to the one we need, like here: Sahih Bukhari 4:52:250
3. Some kind of archiving of all the hadith, but thats too many hadith to put them online.

So yea I'm thinking (1) is easiest. I like (2) as the best for Hadith, because our template link will always go to a single Hadith. If a Sitte hadith page has 5 hadiths and there's no way to link to each of them individually, then the reader has to hunt for the hadith. You just quote the hadith you want to quote and the link can either be a template link (if possible, like for Buhari which works for us) or a static link, that doesnt use a template. It will work out fine.

I see Buhari had one hadith per page (or if there are HTML anchor links, those also work like our existing Quran/hadith templates) so the template works for that case.

As far as I can see, there's no way to make a template for the Sitte hadith so that when its clicked, it shows one hadith (its own page or section). If this is so, then (2) is the solution for that. We keep the Quran and Buhari as they are, but we use (2) for the Sitte hadith. We can also use (2) for Buhari. Whichever you think is the best/most practical solution. --Axius (talk) 18:00, 8 March 2013 (PST)

Rethinking: we use Quran template as it is (the new turkish template).

For hadiths: We quote the Turkish translation and we do something like this for what you translated just now: İslamda Cinsel Ayrımcılık

I changed the small source text, which has both the English and Turkish sources. This way we are keeping track of the original English hadith, in case the Turklish link goes down. Any thoughts on a better alternative? This I think is actually better than for example what you see here [4], where the English source is linked (because perhaps there was none available)

So I think this Eng/Turkish sourcing is just fine. The most important thing is the translation itself and when we add two links, or (even one is fine). The advantage of having both sources is that verification can be made right there and it actually doesn't take any significant extra work, as opposed to any other method. --Axius (talk) 19:17, 13 March 2013 (PDT)

Double linking is fine for me, at least lets reader to keep track of the hadiths even if relevant sources in their language do not exist.

I'm currently translating the 72 virgins article but the process is somewhat slow. Finding the equivalents of the hadiths in Turkish takes much time.Altarbey (talk) 03:47, 16 March 2013 (PDT)

Great thanks. One way to search for anything on a certain site (if it doesnt have Google search on it) is to type this in google:

the sentence or words I am searching for site:thewebsite.com

With just the top-level domain, you'll search the whole site example. If they have a sub-domain like in this case, you can search only within that[5]. You can try different words in case they used another word. Its ideal if you can find it translated but if you cant find it easily, you can translate it yourself and just link the English portion. --Axius (talk) 08:43, 16 March 2013 (PDT)

I wish it was that easy :) Turkish has suffered from being infiltrated by arabic and farsi since 1300ac and after 1500 when ottomans take over the khalifate, more and more arabic and farsi infiltrated into Turkish. The ottoman language was a freak show consisting of a little Turkish, vastly arabic and farsi. Now, we are using modern Turkish, which almost is a way cleaned up version of the Anatolian Turkish. These religious devotees still insist on using the arabised Turkish, that's why the translation goes like this: "english->modern Turkish-> arabised Turkish + guess the words and search loop"

for example:

"Will he have any necessity of passing urine and stools" is "dışkılaması veya işemesi gerekecek mi?" in modern day Turkish, but the exact sentence from gazali's hadiths that is in arabised Turkish is "Muhakkak ki yiyen ve içen bir kimse def-i hacete mecbur olur". That is not even a direct question, and a rough translation would be "surely, one who eats or drinks will eventually have to get rid of hacet(need for something, here it means need for pee, or defecate)". It's almost always like this, that's why if i can not translate the hadith myself, searching for the originals might take hours. Anyway, it goes slow but steady.

Thats interesting. Yea those two translations of the same thing look very different. Glad you know these things. Would have been nice if there was a 'modern' turkish hadith site. --Axius (talk) 20:19, 16 March 2013 (PDT)