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Simon Ockley again

My Arab friends have given me some help about Simon Ockley's translation of the paedophilia text. Simon Ockley was translating this text. https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=xLJEAAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&authuser=0&hl=en. You can scroll forward to page 23, where you will recognise the words Mohamet, Abu Bakr, Aisha. There is no serious doubt that Ockley has made an accurate translation of Maracci's Latin. You will see that the Arab scholar was called Abdulrahman al-Hamdani. My friends say that the title of his book is Al-Shabayat. They cannot read Latin and I did not tell them what it was about. I just asked them about the sentence of Arabic. They said it means: "He reached out his blessed arm and grabbed her by the clothes." They were very surprised by this odd sentence. I had to explain to them that it was probably a quote from the book, and the story was about Muhammad and Aisha. So I think we can fairly say that Maracci did have access to a real book and that he made a fair translation of the story. Now we must try to find out who the scholar was and when he lived. Perhaps then we can establish the reliability of his narrative. But there is something about it that rings horribly true. I don't think a Muslim hagiographer would have invented this story.1234567 (talk) 05:01, 13 April 2013 (PDT)

Interesting! Thanks for keeping us posted. --Sahabah (talk) 11:10, 13 April 2013 (PDT)

Al-Uzza & Friends

Any examples of that artwork on a temporary upload or external link? Thanks for adding that image. --Axius (talk) 09:10, 21 April 2013 (PDT)

Okay, that wasn't a no, meaning you would consider it. But wouldn't neo-Pagan (i.e. contemporary pagan) artwork be the same as you considering graffiti artwork if it was of a pagan goddess? Unlike the other image provided by 1234567, it wouldn't have any historical connection to the subject. It would just be for "illustrative" purposes (something the new policies say no to).--Sahabah (talk) 09:18, 21 April 2013 (PDT)

I was just wondering what it looks like. --Axius (talk) 09:25, 21 April 2013 (PDT)

A google search brought up this - everything both ancient and modern. https://www.google.com.au/search?q=Al-Uzza+Al-Lat+Manat&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=K2N0UcPHLdCYiAeh8oDwAQ&ved=0CDoQsAQ&biw=1366&bih=621

Yes, I see what you mean about neo-Pagan artwork being a modern reconstruction that would probably have only tenuous links to the original paganism. (Pace those modern pantheists who think otherwise; but neo-Pagans do not sacrifice their infants to Molech!) The spirit of the reconstruction is not too difficult to hit off in the case of the Arabian trinity, since Al-Uzza is Minerva/Athena and Al-Lat is Ceres/Demeter. Manat has no obvious European parallel (the Graiai? Nemesis?), which explains something about the differences between the two cultures; but she is nevertheless a recognisable "type".1234567 (talk) 15:12, 21 April 2013 (PDT)

Thanks for the link and info. That is definitely way above my level of expertise/knowledge in that area, but it sounds really interesting. --Axius (talk) 10:54, 27 April 2013 (PDT)

Yes, very interesting, but somewhat academic. If Ancient Semitic paganism were still being practised today, we would have to start a WikiSemitism site and write about all the evils of human sacrifice, ritual prostitution and violent raiding. But this isn't the case. The few Neo-Pagans I've met have been very gentle people who try to disbelieve the dark history of the ancient religions and focus on back-to-nature pantheism, healthy eating and meditation. There is no real connection between their beliefs (as shown in the pretty artwork) and the original religions that indirectly inspired them.

By contrast, the problem with Islam is that there are Muslims alive today who try to be exactly like Muhammad.1234567 (talk) 02:07, 29 April 2013 (PDT)

New articles based on your talk page comments

hi 1234567, you had left these two talk page comments: (1) Talk:Polygamy_in_Islam#Muhammad_married_poor_widows_to_save_them_from_destitution and (2) Talk:Polygamy_in_Islam#Muhammad_committed_polygamy_out_of_political_necessity. These two items could be polished and sourced and moved into a new article for example Charity and Political Necessity of Muhammad's Marriages and there can be a combined conclusion like we have here. This new article can then be linked from Polygamy in Islam in the section Muhammad and Polygamy.

Your first edit was a comment here: Talk:Unjust Treatment of Wives (Qur'an 4:129) and maybe that can be used in some way as well in that article Unjust Treatment of Wives (Qur'an 4:129).

Your knowledge of Muhammad and women in his life and your strong interest in this topic is great and I'm glad you decided to come here share and create what you have.

A few other things, if you like:

• You can create Sandbox links in your user space and use them for as scratchpads for any purpose, e.g. Sandbox 1, Sandbox 2, Sandbox 3 etc, as many as you like. These can be linked on your user page like User:Sahabah has it
• Old comments on your talk page can be moved into archives: User talk:1234567/Archive
• Its easy to rename a user (if you'd like to use Petra or anything else, for example), or keep it as it is.

--Axius (talk) 10:49, 27 April 2013 (PDT)

Thanks for the reminder. I am in fact feeling the need of sandboxes.

I was planning to write an article about how none of Muhammad's wives was a destitute widow, a kind of companion piece to the one about how none of them was elderly. While I would also like to write one about how none of the marriages was politically necessary, that one will be more difficult to hit off correctly. It would involve speculation about what would have happened if he had not acted, e.g., if Khadija had lived another 15 years and therefore he had never married any of the others. And of course we never know what would have happened. However, it's pretty obvious to me that if Muhammad had never married any of these other women, the big difference to the progress of Islam would have been close to zero.

I'm currently working on the biographical essay about Aisha. As a biography, it really ought to include some paragraphs about her long widowhood, but I don't have good resources for that at present. I shall probably submit it with only a brief overview of her later life, but add more about this in future, when I have bought a few more books. The stunning thing about Aisha is how she didn't seem to believe in Islam at all, yet she was nevertheless its foremost proponent.

After that, we have a choice. I could just work through all the wives in chronological order (Sawda, then Hafsa, then Zaynab ... etc.). Or I could follow your original brief, which was a request for controversy, and deal with the major scandals first. The existing article about Safiya needs to be tidied, and there are some great little tidbits that are not commonly known (were you aware that the murdered poet Kaab ibn Al-Ashraf was her cousin, almost certainly a person to whom she was close?). And I notice that so far you don't have any single article about Zaynab bint Jahsh. Again, the story as it's usually told is different from what the sources say: Zayd actually had three other wives beside Zaynab, and he was (at least) her second husband.

As for the unjust treatment of wives, I think the story about food distribution belongs in the article about Zaynab. For each wife, I shall be writing about how she got along with her co-wives. So any story that involves interactions between two or more of the wives will be included on the page of the wife whom Muhammad married latest. E.g., I have written about how Aisha (second wife) was jealous of the other women but not included specifics about those women. Aisha's general relationship with Sawda (third wife - at least according to Aisha) will be in the article about Sawda, but the incident in which Aisha and Hafsa (fourth wife) colluded to tease Sawda will be under Hafsa. Mariya (thirteenth wife) will not be mentioned until she gets her own article, even though it was an episode in which all the previous wives were involved.1234567 (talk) 16:00, 28 April 2013 (PDT)