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The discussion of consent in this article is confused

The claim that men could only have sex with his concubine if she consented is nonsensical. "Consent" with regard to sexual intercourse is a modern concept, and it's impossible for a slave to consent to something her master does to her. Even if a slave expressed consent, the power relationship would render it meaningless.

If, on the other hand, you wants to claim that "consent" here refers to a pre-modern Islamic concept, you need to identify what that concept is. There isn't one, and nor should we expect to find one, since it would contradict the basic definition of slavery, which is the right of one person to control another.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Jb212 (talk • contribs) 18:20, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

Since you've drawn my attention to this talk page entry @Toddy1, I'd note that the content on and a number of other pointed subjects in the article comes almost exclusively from Kecia Ali, who is a specialist in Islamic gender studies. Two points here: one, while Kecia Ali is an entirely appropriate expert source, again, as mentioned by @Nishidani in relation to other themes, there is definitely some cherry-picking of Ali's rather nuanced analysis on this subject. Also, while Kecia Ali is an expert, if larger sections of the page are relying largely or solely on Ali, we need to be careful that there isn't WP:UNDUE emphasis on Ali's academic take. Iskandar323 (talk) 08:32, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Yes. The problem is caused by Google-reading, where people do not read the books they cite, but merely read odd sentences or part-sentences that appear on a Google search.-- Toddy1 (talk) 08:48, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Indeed, as Toddy1 said. As the bibliography impresses on us, there is a huge literature out there, and whenever I have checked it item by item, I see a large swathe of subtle and nuanced argument reduced to the 'juicy' parts. Historical anthropology should be our model. Many of our modern categories carry different implications back, anachronistically, into the past. 'Women for sexual use' implies some captured woman under lock and key, taken out for abuse and then shut back in a kind of improvised permanent brothel quarter in patriarchal houses, as 'sex slaves' per dozens of modern films on sexual trafficking. Of course, we must be on guard against blinking in embarrassment, or reversing the bias here by suppressing facts that embarrass modern values. So we need to define the title, ergo, scope of a very complex set of historical realities. Above all though, hard work - a careful focused reading of the sources in so far as we can access them. Nishidani (talk) 09:32, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 9 October, 2021

This edit request to Sexual slavery in Islam has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

This can be cited as a reference to add a sentence in the lead, "The consent of the slave for sex, for withdrawal before ejaculation or to marry her off to someone else was not considered necessary". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2405:204:578C:A76:3813:EA38:F15C:FCE6 (talk) 07:46, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

 Not done for now: Where exactly in the lead would you like this sentence? And what is your rationale for placing this in the lead rather than another section? —Sirdog (talk) 15:52, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

 Reopened Sirdog, it can be the second sentence in the lead, but feel free to add it anywhere! I observed that Kecia Ali has been used as a source for many sentences in the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 27.7.6.21 (talk) 17:07, 9 October 2021 (UTC)

Pinging @Sirdog for IP. ––FormalDude talk 08:13, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

Ah, thank you for the ping FormalDude, and thank you for your response IP! I'll see if I can find a way to insert that sentence or something equivalent to that in the article sometime tomorrow. —Sirdog (talk) 03:31, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

• Should not be done. Can you explain why this deserves to be in the lead? Please be careful of WP:UNDUE. This is already in the body of the article and that seems like appropriate weight.VR _talk 15:29, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

It is like a summary - that is why I felt it was fine there.-Baamiyaan2 (talk) 16:05, 11 October 2021 (UTC)Sockpuppet.VR _talk 01:16, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

Can you explain why this deserves to be in the lead? For clarity, I did not intend to place that sentence or something equivalent to it in the lead. I am not comfortable messing with leads at the current stage of my editing career. I planned to read the article in whole, determine if inclusion was necessary, and if so, perform it. That said, I'm going to hold off now and see how this conversation progresses. —Sirdog (talk) 18:13, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

Sirdog, I repeat, "It is like a summary - that is why I felt it was fine there". You should probably read the article. If you feel that it can be in the lead please add it, I will not be doing so.-Baamiyaan2 (talk) 01:33, 12 October 2021 (UTC)Sockpuppet.VR _talk 01:16, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

Aciram, Grufo, Mcphurphy and Anachronist should probably look into it as they seem to know the topic.-Baamiyaan2 (talk) 02:04, 12 October 2021 (UTC)Sockpuppet.VR _talk 01:16, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

Baamiyaan2, I did read your explanation. My previous reply was me stating that I'm pulling out of the request due to there being some debate on it's inclusion. As you say, I have indeed not yet read this article, I will let others more knowledgeable in this subject area than I handle this. Cheers! —Sirdog (talk) 02:48, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for the ping. I don't know what this discussion is about, I stopped following this page months ago. If it is about inserting "The consent of the slave for sex, for withdrawal before ejaculation or to marry her off to someone else was not considered necessary" in the lead, I am against, it is already obvious that if you are a slave your consent never matters, so the sentence will exist only for emphatic reasons, and emphasis is POV. That sentence would become necessary if we started calling slaves "concubines", as we did in the past, but since we stopped doing that there is no reason to emphasize things. Don't take my words for granted, there might be also stylistic reasons that allow an emphasis, and I would need a better explanation of the two opposite positions. --Grufo (talk) 13:55, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

The lead should not simply parrot a single sentence in the article body. That sentence does not even summarize the section in which it appears, which is about consent, and not specifically about "withdrawal". Also, the discussion of withdrawal occupies just a single short paragraph in the cited article. Therefore, putting the sentence in the lead gives it undue weight. A sentence summarizing the section named "The issue of consent" should summarize it more generally, not focus on one specific aspect. ~Anachronist (talk) 14:27, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Neutrality template (again)

Despite the attempts of multiple editors to remove the neutrality template – which was inserted more than one year ago only in the name of the (now solved) title controversy – a user keeps restoring it (#1, #2 – checked only the last two months). --Grufo (talk) 15:58, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

The title dispute was never resolved. This page still has a title that does not reflect the reliable sources (see here and here). And there are various other neutrality issues, some of which have been discussed as late as this week and last.VR _talk 16:03, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

Title: In your head, maybe, probably; for Misplaced Pages, solved long ago. Neutrality issues: they were not discussions, it was you imposing your point of view through reverts. --Grufo (talk) 16:26, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

Please mind WP:CIVIL.VR _talk 16:40, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

I agree with Grufo. The dispute was resolved long ago, notwithstanding the insistence of one editor. These tags have no business in the article. Mcphurphy (talk) 10:22, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

@Mcphurphy: I have tried to address the behavior issue, but the discussion has not brought consequences so far. --Grufo (talk) 11:32, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

@Vice regent: Please could you provide a paragraph explaining the issues.-- Toddy1 (talk) 10:24, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

This entire article is POV, starting with its title. This is not about Islam, this is about Islamic, Arab, Ottoman or whatever societies also happened to be majority Muslim. We don't write up the history of the North Atlantic slave trade as: Slavery in Christianity: it would be absurd POV (- in fact, as it turns out, this redirects to Christian views on slavery). We also don't write up the fact that Christian slave owners sexually abused their female slaves as Sexual slavery in Christianity. As it so happens, History of slavery in the Muslim world is already an article, as well as Slavery in the Ottoman Empire - the latter of which already has a large write up on sexual slavery (if that is indeed even what we are to call it). I will be raising an RFC soon. Iskandar323 (talk) 11:01, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

This article is not about what Muslims did or do, it is about how Islam, as religion, theologically and historically addresses the topic of sexual slavery. Or should we assume that Islam has no opinions on sexual slavery? Misplaced Pages has also Islamic views on slavery; sexual slavery is a subcategory of that. There is also a WP:POVFORK clone that a user has created after attempting to rename this page without success at Islamic views on concubinage: if according to you it is wrong to have a page dedicated to what a religion thinks about sexual slavery, I assume it is also wrong to have a clone on the same topic that uses an apologetic title – but why do I have the feeling that you will disagree with this assumption? --Grufo (talk) 11:23, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

To be honest, apologetics don't come into it. The big problem with this article is it combines gross generalisations (usually linked to one source and page number, but without any proper footnotes), with some rather select examples. Take, for instance the section on war captives, where we have three paragraphs of generalising, paraphrased tect with no detailed footnotes, followed by two much larger paragraphs on specific war crimes by the Ottoman Empire during the Greek struggle for independence - a particularly acrimonious conflict in which numerous war crimes were committed by both sides. Then there is the lack of historical context. For most of ancient, medieval and early modern history, it was routine in many cultures for women captured in battle to be treated as property. While disturbing by modern standards, this was pretty common across ancient to pre-modern empires. Sex slaves is a very POV term to describe the practice, however. We don't say "Rome conquered the Gallic tribe and took sex slaves", "Genghis sacked Samarkand and took sex slaves", etc. Women were captured and often enslaved as part of the far more generalised looting that took place. Sometimes they were used for sex, sometimes they weren't, but this type of violence was highly normalised in the ancient world. I don't know exactly what should be done about this page, but at the moment, it is highly confused, combining general information about slavery, such as the abolition section, some specific material pertaining to female slaves, and then a whole bunch of random examples almost definitely duplicating content from other pages, such as the material on Ottoman sexual slavery. "Islamic views on concubinage" is currently a much more focused, precise and clear article. I don't know what this is meant to be. It seems half just confused and half some sort of weird, tangential attack page. Iskandar323 (talk) 12:39, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

As I thought. --Grufo (talk) 12:47, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

This article, if anything, is the WP:POVFORK, beginning first and foremost with the title. Iskandar323 (talk) 13:36, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

You mean that the author of this page read Vice regent's clone, traveled back in time, WP:POVFORKED it in the past and forced Vice regent to WP:POVFORK it back? I love time loops. --Grufo (talk) 13:49, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

@Toddy1:, here is a non-exhaustive list of POV issues with his article (as has been mentioned before).

1. Either the scope or the title of this article is against policy. Mcphurphy, the creator, said about the the scope: "Any instance of Muslims practising sexual slavery belongs in this article". There are few RS (if any) that cover such a broad scope. Instead, RS do cover the specific scope of concubinage in Muslim history and Islamic thought. If concubinage is indeed the topic, then the name should be "concubinage" because that is the WP:COMMONNAME as shown here and here.
2. The sectioning of this article gives WP:UNDUE weight to topics are either not touched or barely so by sources that attempt to give a broad overview of this topic. There is a clear attempt to cherrypick certain aspects from certain sources and give them more weight than they are typically given in RS. For example, I have gone through dozens of books that cover slavery or concubinage in the Muslim world and concubinage in Islamic law and I didn't find any that cover the topic of forced conversion (except one source that said forced conversion of slaves was prohibited). Yet we have a section Forced conversion for concubinage. This can be mentioned in this article but an entire section is UNDUE. That section is also POV because it is based entirely on one source, and doesn't contain any reference to dozens of sources (both Muslim and non-Muslim) that state that forced conversion is contrary to the Quranic verse Al-Baqara 256.
3. 5 out of the 7 paragraphs in The issue of consent are based on the views of only one scholar: Kecia Ali. What is the reason that other scholars like Tamara Sonn, Jonathan Brown, Rabb Instisar, Hina Azam etc should be given far less weight?
4. This article attempts to divide history into "Sexual enslavement of non-Muslim women by Muslim men", "Sexual enslavement of Muslim women by non-Muslim men" and "Sexual enslavement of Muslim women by Muslim men". Do reliable use a similar form of sectioning? Or is this again Mcphurphy's invention to give UNDUE weight to certain aspects?
5. The section Sexual slavery in pre-Islamic Arabia and early Islam is based partially on only WP:PRIMARY sources. As Wiqi55 pointed out, secondary RS are needed to determine weight - if no reliable secondary source exist, it is UNDUE to mention the content.VR _talk 12:28, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

@Vice regent: I have transformed your bullet list into a numbered list so that we can refer to each point easily. You can revert it if you prefer differently.

1. The title cannot constitute an element for the POV template. When a dispute ends it ends, and you have to accept that the status quo is restored. “Any instance of Muslims practising sexual slavery” cannot be the content of the page. But Muslims that practice(d) sexual slavery using the religion in support can – because a religion is not scriptures, is how people interpret these.
2. Cherrypicking? I think I have not seen any other editor who cherrypicks or POV-pushes as much as you do when it comes to this topic (#1, #2, #3, #4, #5). And yet, it is not enough for you to cherrypick without anyone protesting, you want to cherrypick and accuse other people of cherrypicking. That said, have you tried in the last year to address the “issue” that you mention?
3. Have you ever tried to propose these authors, either in the discussion or directly in the article?
4. We are quite free to choose how to present a content. What section of those is given undue weight according to you?
5. You are doing it again. An editor, Wiqi55, sees a primary source problem and “fixes it” (I won't discuss about the content of the edits here). Another editor, Mcphurphy disagrees and a discussion begins – in which Wiqi55 pronounces the words that you quoted. Wiqi55's edits are kept in the end, so “problem solved”. And yet you quote the sentence that they pronounced when there was “a primary source problem” in support of the claim that currently there is a primary source problem.

--Grufo (talk) 13:32, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

• An added problem here is that no one seems to be able to agree on what this article is actually about. Hypothetically, for example, if I temporarily go along with your line of thinking Grufo, this page should be called Islamic views on sexual slavery. However, Mcphurphy has an entirely conflicting view, which is that this is not about Islamic views at all, but about all the instances of sexual misconduct towards slaves ever committed by someone ostensibly a Muslim. Setting aside questions of whether there might be any inappropriate POV here, this approach would more aptly result in an article called Sexual slavery in the Islamic/Muslim World - effectively a branch out from the main "History of slavery in the Muslim world" page. Added to this is the somewhat broader issue of whether sexual slavery is even an appropriate term, and whether this topic truly deserves its own space outside of the related main articles on slavery. As noted below , sexual slavery only currently appears to be being covered separately with respect to "Islam, China, Africa, and the Ottoman Empire" - a pretty Orientalist WP:BIAS selection that singles out Islam as a religion, and for good measure, also an Islamic Empire. Iskandar323 (talk) 12:56, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

I wouldn't be against calling this page Islamic views on sexual slavery – both titles are quite similar. As I said above, I don't think the page can be about people who happened to be Muslims that enslaved other people; the religion must be used in support (and cannot be done by a single individual, it must be socially accepted, at least by a group). But Mcphurphy is here, so maybe we can directly ask them what they meant. And finally, I wouldn't be against having an article named Christian views on sexual slavery, or whatever other religion's views. --Grufo (talk) 13:44, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

• If the society a historical person lived in said that an owner can lawfully have sex with their female slave (irrespective of what the slave wants), then it is not misconduct for the owner to have sex with their female slave. (We probably disagree with the values of that society, but I am not sure that our beliefs are relevant.)-- Toddy1 (talk) 19:56, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

Yes of course. But this page would not even be about that owner, this page would be about how that owner was or was not accepted in his society. --Grufo (talk) 12:47, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

• Grufo you asked what was stopping me (and others) from fixing POV issues on this article. Here's your answer: Mcphurphy whole-scale reverted everyone's edits, including Iskandar's removals and my additions. In the edit summary, Mcphurphy indicated they want "long talk-page discussion" which sounds to me like Misplaced Pages:Status quo stonewalling. This is why this dispute has dragged on for so long. Because some users have WP:OWNERSHIP issues and exhaust everyone through WP:BLUDGEONING.VR _talk 21:07, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

I think we should have a discussion, but not a long one. As for the topic of this page I expressed my opinion, which I believe is not different than yours (correct me if I am wrong). I saw that Mcphurphy has a different view, which would require a longer explanation from them (“Islam” is not “people who are Muslim”). Some of the parts you and Iskandar323 blanked had one or more problems (like this one I attempted to fix or, for example, a sentence like “Some of them were sold to Arab men in Libya” has a WP:POV emphasis on the word “Arab”, so it should be transformed into something like “Some of them were sold in Libya” – Libyans are already Arabs – and similar things), however WP:BLANKING is equally wrong. I believe that if we are able to make the page as aseptic and dry as possible even the most prejudiced users (both the most apologetic and the most critic ones) will find it OK. Not just the tone can express WP:POV content, also what we decide to give space to can be problematic. I believe that fixing all the problems will require an effort from some editors. The most apologetic ones need to accept that religions, as practiced through history, can have problematic parts when judged with modern eyes, and Misplaced Pages cannot suddenly become apologetic to prevent a feeling of shame in people who live centuries later. The most critic ones need to accept that if someone has a religion not everything they do is due to their religion. I am fully aware of the discriminating usage of religions today and in the past, but I also believe that truth has no fears. --Grufo (talk) 12:47, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

@Grufo: please propose in one sentence what the scope of this article should be.VR _talk 12:50, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

I think the scope of the article should be “How Islam addresses/addressed the topic of sexual slavery”. By “addressing” I mean scriptural interpretations, laws and practices. --Grufo (talk) 12:54, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

When you say "Islam addressed" do you count the actions of every Muslim past or present? Do you consider all types of sexual slavery, including forced marriage, child sexual abuse, forced prostitution etc?VR _talk 15:26, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

As I said, individuals don't count in what they do, but they do count in what society allows them to do. If I punch you in the nose saying that the law allows me to do it, I cannot speak for the law. But if you go to the police and they tell you “Yeah, they are right, the law allows them to punch you in the nose”, things start to have a different meaning. In the specific case of sexual slavery it is likely that there will be opposite interpretations of the scriptures, and we should report them, giving appropriate weight on the basis of how much weight they actually have/had in their societies. Something similar happens in Christian views on slavery, with Mormons supporting the enslavement of black people: although Mormons are a tiny minority of Christians, they do exist as a community, so Misplaced Pages reports their historical view. Sexual slavery includes all forms of sexual slavery, but if some types of slaveries are not mentioned anywhere in the religion we should not even mention them. Or if some forms are mentioned to be condemned, we should report that. Islam includes past and present, so the page should not avoid epochs. --Grufo (talk) 16:17, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

But Islam is open to interpretation, and it is not hard to find justifications for a wide variety of acts. For example, the Muslims men who practice sexual slavery with young boys in Afghanistan justify their acts: "homosexuality is forbidden in Islam, but those involved in Bacha Bazi justify their actions by saying that, since they are not in love with these boys, it doesn’t apply."

On the other hand, narrowing our scope to only practices that were widely considered legal and socially acceptable in major Muslim states throughout history could be a better scope. We know, for example, that concubinage with slaves was widely considered legal until the 20th century.VR _talk 16:57, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

I think Bacha Bazi is a good example. From your quotation it seems they interpret the Islamic concept of homosexuality as being in love, not as having sex, so they justify it within religion. Islam for them is that, more or less like “true Christianity” for the various Christian groups is what they profess. Narrowing to states is problematic. First, we don't do that with other religions, and second, religious groups might not be represented by any state and still be sizeable religious groups. If an intepretation exists and manifest through practices, that is exactly what a religion is. --Grufo (talk) 17:20, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Ok, so you would include Bacha Bazi within “How Islam addresses/addressed the topic of sexual slavery”? For you, it seems what's important is if a Muslim comes up with a religious justification or not for his practices (no matter how much it is rejected by other Muslims).VR _talk 17:23, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

As I said, I think due weight to an intepretation must be given on the basis of the impact that it has. If a minority of educated Muslim followers/scholars says and practices A, but a majority of less educated followers/scholars says and practices B, you cannot ignore B on the basis that they are less educated. Otherwise an atheist might pass by and say that both A and B are not educated enough to have the right to exist. Same happens with inverted proportions. A minority that you consider more “primitive” than the educated majority does deserve some mention, more or less like the Mormons. --Grufo (talk) 17:33, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

So that's a "yes", right? I just want clarity, that's all.VR _talk 17:37, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Yes, if the page wants to be encyclopedic. That does not mean it must become WP:ATTACK, there are many ways of reporting it. For example, saying “Islam endorses Bacha Bazi” is not the same thing as saying “Supporters of the practice of Bacha Bazi justify it using Islam in support, with the argument that ... etc. etc.”. I think Christian views on slavery can be a good page to imitate for the general tone used. A lot of Christians have justified slavery thorugh history and the page says it, and yet that page does not feel like WP:ATTACK. --Grufo (talk) 17:46, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Small Request

I don't believe I'm allowed to edit this, could someone make sure that for Kecia Ali there is a hyperlink to her wiki page? Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by Zaynab1418 (talk • contribs) 16:29, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

Done. Jushyosaha604 (talk) 17:36, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

Btw, as I was putting the hyperlink in, I noticed that we quote Kecia Ali a lot at the expense of other sources... There's even whole paragraphs that are just block quotes from her. Addressing the imbalance might be a good idea for improving this article moving forward. Jushyosaha604 (talk) 17:39, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

Also, regarding our sources, I notice we are citing a politician Sadaf Jaffer's blog post along with the academic research conducted by various scholars. Might be worth reconsidering the weight being given to that particular source in the article.Jushyosaha604 (talk) 17:48, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

Here are some books we could look into

• Slavery in the Islamic World: Its Characteristics and Commonality by Mary Ann Fay
• Women and Gender in the Qur'an by Celene Ibrahim
• Slavery and Islam by Jonathon Brown
• Concubines and Courtesans: Women and Slavery in Islamic History by Matthew Gordon
• Possessed by the Right Hand: The Problem of Slavery in Islamic Law and Muslim Cultures by Bernard Freamon
• Sexual Violation in Islamic Law: Substance, Evidence, and Procedure by Hina Azam --Zaynab1418 (talk) 02:57, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

What is with the sourcing and abominable generalisation on this page?!

Has everyone who is editing this page lost their marbles? The first source on this page is a pdf of an unsubmitted graduate student's thesis, not something peer reviewed? Seriously?! And what is with all the blanket statements such as: "Islamic law says X", Islam allows Y, etc.? Islamic law and Islam don't DO anything! They are inanimate. People, with their interpretations in different times and places, DO things. Every example given in a piece like this has to be carefully contextualised. I thought this page would be bad before I clicked on it, but boy did I lack imagination. This is a complete joke. Iskandar323 (talk) 19:19, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

@Iskandar323: Tell me about it. The creator of this article explained "Any instance of Muslims practising sexual slavery belongs in this article". Crimes by certain Muslim individuals and groups are notable in their own right (ISIS's sexual slavery, Hindu-Muslim rapes in India etc). But I have never come across a reliable source that aims to generalize all instances of sexual slavery by Muslims (or Christians, or Buddhists, or atheists, etc). This article was borne out of an attempt to synthesize sources to push a particular POV.VR _talk 19:43, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

I am going to be sorely tempted tomorrow to just get out a hammer and chisel and start hacking away. Iskandar323 (talk) 19:57, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

Be WP:BOLD! But also don't be surprised if someone reverts your hard work. Might be more productive to go slower, one section at a time, seeking consensus as you go along. What, in your opinion, are the biggest issues? Can you give examples? Then we can tackle those first.VR _talk 00:59, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

I see that unsubmitted thesis pdf right up front as a particularly outstanding issue. This is a broad topic and there is enough peer-reviewed academic literature on the subject that the piece doesn't need any dodgy pdfs or episodic news links. Iskandar323 (talk) 06:26, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

There is a real WP:BIAS imbalance on Misplaced Pages in general on this subject as well. There are individual articles on "Sexual slavery in ...": Islam, China, contemporary Africa, and the Ottoman Empire only - the latter for sure being duplicate of this work, but more broadly, what the hell? What about the Roman Empire, Persian Empire, and, let's not forget, contemporary Europe, where modern slavery and sex trafficking are absolutely rife. Clearly there is a general mood to only expand these articles in a certain direction. The framing is also all over the place. If this is about Islam, it should be solely about the concept of sexual slavery as it is presented from a religious perspective. It shouldn't be about examples. If it is about sexual slavery, past and present, in the Arab or Islamic World, it should be "Sexual slavery in the Arab/Islamic World" and then show historic examples. A piece blending theology and examples is just a hot, broken mess. It's actually hard to know where to begin in tackling what appears to have become a runaway train of WP:BIAS and bad sourcing. Contemplating an RFC. Iskandar323 (talk) 06:36, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

All good points. There is an article the narrowly focuses on just the theological and legal perspectives (Islamic views on concubinage) so this article can become just about the history of the practice. And RfC on the scope of this article is a great idea! In my experience, RfC works better if you let users pick from several suggestions. So what do you suggest the scope should be? I think this article should focus mainly on history (Islamic views on concubinage should focus on theology/law). In terms of breadth it should be limited to the historic practice of concubinage (which in Muslim history was defined as a man having a long-term relationship with his female slave). It should not try to lump that together with other forms of sexual slavery practiced by Muslims. We see that Slavery in the United States is about the historic slavery in the US but Human trafficking in the United States is a different article.VR _talk 13:57, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

I was having a conversation this evening about this, just with friends, outside of Misplaced Pages, and they were amazed that something as unencyclopedic and broad as this article could actually exist. It provided some much needed clarity and drew my attention to the fact that really, all articles of this type should be linked to a specific geography and time, and, as Karaeng Matoaya pointed out , not span multiple eras and geographies. At the very least there should be a distinction between historic and modern examples. Historic examples of course being pre-abolition both in global society in general, and within Islamic communities. Groups like Isis/Isil that use ideologies of the past to justify their terrorism of the present should not be bundled together with this. Neither should the Indian partition, the Sudanese civil war or the Ottoman material, which already has its own, specific article. If anything, if this is to cover something semi-specific, it should most likely be limited to the early broadly Arabic-speaking caliphates: Rashidun, Umayyad and Abbasid - to actually form a body of content that is distinct from the existing article and content on the Turkic Ottoman caliphate. Iskandar323 (talk) 17:07, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

I am open to renaming the article Sexual slavery in the Islamic World provided that all the historical instances of sexual slavery practised by Muslims, including more modern cases, which have been newly removed by Iskandar are reincorporated into the article and the theological discussion behind all elements of the historical practice is also retained, so that readers can understand how this practice lasted so long in the Muslim world until the West forced the Muslim world to abolish slavery, and with it concubinage.

The claim that Islam or Islamic law allows or doesn't allow anything is incorrect and problematic. As Islam, including its primary sources such as the Quran and Hadith, was transmitted through people. Is Iskandar saying Islam is a man-made religion? If so, how Muslims, especially those trained in Islamic jurisprudence, have interpreted Islam for most of Islam's existence is highly pertinent. Mcphurphy (talk) 21:33, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

The above is an admission that this page is WP:SYNTH: Mcphurphy takes source A that is talking about a theological issue, combines it with source B that is talking about a historical rape committed by Muslims, to advance the position "how this practice lasted so long in the Muslim world". Never mind that those sources might be talking about completely different time periods and locations.VR _talk 21:51, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

Citation clashes caused by a mix of citation methods

Either this article needs to be written on the basis of using <ref name=IJMES-49-1>_____</ref> or the {{sfn|Ali|2017|p152-158}} method of doing citations. Mixing the systems produces a mess. One advantage of the <ref name=IJMES-49-1>_____</ref> method is that links to Google books can be to the relevant page(s), which is less likely to be achieved with the {{sfn| method.-- Toddy1 (talk) 15:08, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

New edits

There has been a spate in recent editing which is quite contentious. For instance, we are seeing removal of text about sexual enslavement during the Armenian genocide and other places under the claim that its "off-topic" but the same editor then goes on to add that material to other related articles. There are multiple other issues with Iskander's new edits which I will elaborate on later. Mcphurphy (talk) 21:08, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

Reverting someone first and then saying you'll "elaborate on later", is pretty disruptive. Especially since you reverted my edit too without any explanation.VR _talk 21:14, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

If you are familiar WP:SPLIT then you will know that an article of more than 100,000kB is ripe for size reduction (and if not, harsh editing down) - principally because articles of this size become borderline unreadable. All of the content I have dealt with is off-topic - the modern stuff not least because it follows a whole section on abolition, which explains the end of slavery in the Islamic world. Isolated instances of kidnapping, rape and sexual misconduct on Islamic pretenses in modern times do not undo an abolition that spans continents. You can also follow the discussion between myself and Vice Regent, which you chose to ignore, on a number of other reasons why these fairly niche modern examples are inappropriate in this broadly historical article . The content I have moved, I have moved, because it relates to specific conflicts not broader trends, and its most appropriate place is on the specific articles about those conflicts. The content I have simply deleted as off-topic includes: material on the partition of India and reports of sexual violence both committed by and against Muslims - in other words, general history - if this history is to be anywhere, it should clearly be on a page about the partition. Then we have Isis that is a fringe terrorist group that has been declared un-Islamic (informally ex-communicated in some cases) by Muslim leaders around the world. If you want to keep it, put it on the Isis page. The gross issues with using an unsubmitted thesis I have covered below. Iskandar323 (talk) 05:49, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

The abolition stems not from within Islam itself, but was imposed on the Muslim world from the West. All traditional Islamic scholars trained in Islamic jurisprudence still uphold the validity of enslavement by a legitimate Islamic state. The only concept stopping them are the international treaties. The abolition idea stems from the idea that since Muslim countries have signed treaties with non-Muslim countries to not enslave; the non-Muslim citizens of non-Muslim countries cannot be enslaved. They apply a similar argument for non-Muslims who have been protected by the government in Muslim lands. In Islamic law non-Muslims in Muslim lands are not considered protected people unless they enter into a contract with the state and if they rebel against the Muslim state then any such contract is considered broken and the non-Muslims liable to enslavement like all unprotected non-Muslims. Which is why in the modern cases like Armenia it was held by Ottoman scholars that Armenian Christian women could be enslaved because Armenians had broken their contract with the Ottoman state. Similar applies in the other cases listed.

But nevertheless, all that said, we could compromise by renaming this article as Sexual slavery in the Islamic World so we can include everything related to sexual slavery in the Muslim world including the theologically sanctioned practices and the attempted revivals by the likes of ISIS and similar manifestations of old practices.Mcphurphy (talk) 11:36, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Orientalism consists in making an ontology of the other. Modern anthropology is uncomfortable with this generalizing over societies, particularly over civilizations with a long past and present. This is what you appear to be doing here. To cite just two examples.

• 'Imposed on the Muslim world by the West'. I.e. where are the multiple RS for this patronizing view?
• 'All traditional Islamic scholars trained in Islamic jurisprudence still uphold the validity of enslavement by a legitimate Islamic state.' That is a tautology, apart from being a ballistic generalization which implies you have a minute mastery over all Islamic scholars's opinions, whatever sectarian persuasion or school they follow(ed). It is a tautology because you are saying all traditionalist scholars uphold Islamic tradition. Duh.Nishidani (talk) 20:27, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Nishidani you say - "'Imposed on the Muslim world by the West'. I.e. where are the multiple RS for this patronizing view?"

Well here are just a few top notch RS which say that. I will add more in time.

• Ali, Kecia (2016). Sexual Ethics and Islam : Feminist Reflections on Qur'an, Hadith, and Jurisprudence. Oneworld Publications p. 54.
• William Gervase Clarence-Smith; W. G. Clarence-Smith (2006). Islam and the Abolition of Slavery. Oxford University Press. p. 11. Mcphurphy (talk) 03:21, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

Salma Saad thesis

The work by Salma Saad had been published by the University of Leeds in 1990. It has also been cited by other scholars. As such it meets WP:SCHOLARSHIP.

Moreover, in many places where Iskandar removed material citing Saad, there were other secondary sources cited too to back up the same material. Therefore, whole sale removal of material from Salma Saad is unjustified even if it is based on the dubious claim that Salma Saad's work is unreliable. Moreover, many other sources can be found for the same material. Mcphurphy (talk) 21:41, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

No, I only removed material that was solely cited to Saad. The source you appended declares itself to be an unsubmitted thesis. If you want to provide the submitted and approved thesis (which may in fact be quite a different version, as theses can be rejected and resubmitted) then you should find that version, or only use material substantiated by secondary sources referencing the accepted thesis. Given the range of academic sources on this subject it is completely and utterly unnecessary to touch or even go near an unsubmitted, unreliable and unpublished source. Iskandar323 (talk) 04:52, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Bullshit, this is a published piece of scholarship. The university of Leeds published it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ever Grounded (talk • contribs) 10:44, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Agreed with Ever Grounded. This is a University-published thesis and has been cited by scholars. It clearly meets WP:SCHOLARSHIP. Mcphurphy (talk) 11:38, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Is this pdf the published thesis or merely the submitted thesis? Iskandar is right that after a thesis is submitted it undergoes revisions before it is ready to publish.VR _talk 12:43, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

As far as I understand its already final version thesis as it appears on official repo of university site Shrike (talk) 15:33, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

I see that but there are some things about this pdf that throw me off. The front page says "This thesis has never been submitted to this or any other University", which to me sounds like a first draft. The scanned pdf also contains things that are struck out by hand and changed in handwriting. That reinforces my impression that it may not be the final draft.VR _talk 15:43, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

As far I understand it standard disclaimer that work is not plagiarized. Could you give me a few examples "struck out by hand and changed in handwriting". Shrike (talk) 15:49, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

On the abstract page, the page number is struck out and rewritten by hand. On the Abbreviation page "Concordance et Indices de la Tradition Musulmane" is modified by hand, as is the name that follows "Muslim = ..." (its somewhat illegible). The table of contents has several modifications by hand and the page number for Transliteration is struck out and rewritten by hand. In chapter two in the table of contents, two entries are overwritten by hand to the point that they seem illegible (I think its says Muhrim and Muhallil, but I'm not sure).VR _talk 16:11, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Well I still think that not final version will not appear on official website and anyhow the changes are not to the content and IMO are not substantial. We can ask at WP:RSN to get some independent input. Shrike (talk) 16:17, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Umm ... that site is just a repository of theses. It tells us nothing about whether or not a thesis was accepted, in this form or any other. And clearly the version we are being presented with is not a polished version. It is essentially an unfinished document, covered from top to bottom in hand-scrawled edits. Page 65 is missing altogether. Not exactly the stuff of peer-reviewed legend. And who even is Salma Saad that we should be prioritising their thesis of unclear status over the published works of the dozens of peer-reviewed academics and widely published historians in this article. I get that devil's advocacy is a thing, and sometimes has it place, but talk about polishing a turd. Iskandar323 (talk) 22:23, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

@Ever Grounded - Did you review and verify all the details you reverted here --> in 1 minute between your last edit to your user page --> and edit to talk page of the article --> ? I speculate you may have made some errors going through so much text in 60 seconds. Please review your edit again thoroughly and perhaps discuss the changes with @Iskandar323.

• PS - @Ever Grounded, do you have anything to add before I make the revert? (Ever Grounded was reverted while I was typing this)
• PS#2 - By the way. You are a new editor with 11 edits to your credit so I would like to welcome you to Misplaced Pages at the same time. GizzyCatBella🍁 13:40, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

The problem here is not with Saad's thesis, which I find an acceptable source if you use it reading all of the relevant section (pp.234ff) but generally with the fact that, despite impressive sourcing, a large amount of our article if you check, represents only a very thin chink of what is said on the relevant cited pages. You can see this in the lead. Mufti for example fro m pp.1-5 makes a neat distinction between traditionalist and modernist interpretations of Sharia law. In modernist interpretations slavery is un-Islamic. The editor just used a snippet on p.5 to cite the case of enslaving subjugated people, and, within the rest of the lead you have a fabricated orientalist 'ontology' of Islam as a sexual enslaver (of unbelievers). Well Saad's text alone (not to mention many other sources cited) nuances that significantly. The generalization doesn't stand because in Islamic law, from the hadith alone, As the lead has been concocted, and with the prior use of 'is' for an historical 'were/was'), you have jihadi predators enslaving for fucks whatever women falls into their hands, i.e. not Sharia, but the recent practices of ISIS and other militantly predatory mobs in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere. No mention of all of the restrictions placed on concubinage for an enslaved woman, who had to be unmarried, or a virgin, or divorced or widowed.

The issue then is not one that lends itself to tit-and-tat revert battles, but of fixing a decidedly cherrypicked article by presenting the relevant historical evidence ignored in the linked available sources in all of their complexity, and doing so neutrally rather than, as in the general tendency in wiki articles on the Arab/Islamic world, to make a case against both.Nishidani (talk) 16:25, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

@Nishidani: I agree things have been cherry picked and revert battles are unproductive. You're right that the historic practice of concubinage was widely accepted - but strictly within certain limits - whereas the modern day practice is widely rejected by Muslims. And so I think the first step is to decide the scope of the article so we don't conflate things that RS don't conflate. I think the scope should be "historic practice of concubinage in Muslim societies as discussed by relevant RS". What do you think? I want to discuss possible options then put this to RfC.VR _talk 16:50, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Well the article is a mess, and would require hard work to overhaul and put it on a sound footing. The lead is not worth a nob of goatshit as a summary of the content, but the real work would consist in reorganization (starting with pre-Islamic slavery/concubinage traditions (2) the Qur'an and Hadith, and once that is done, then (3) the legal traditions. Only when those three unsexy, unlurid historical realities have been done, could one deal with the rest with periodization and the different conventions of different Muslim societies. Much of the record for each period is just silly listing of cases. Look at the Abbasid caliphate. You'd never guess from that snippet of random tit(illating)bits that of the 36/37 odd (can't remember the exact figure) caliphs, only three were born outside of concubinage: the whole dynasty was ruled throughout by the offspring of slaves.

Is anyone prepared to undertake this. I can't for work commitment in RL, but if there are a few of you there willing to roll up your sleeves and reorganize this not as a scandal sheet but a cogent logically organized survey of the topic, I'd certainly spare what time I have to help.Nishidani (talk) 20:59, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

A retitling along the lines you suggest 'Historic practice of concubinage in Muslim societies' sounds like an excellent idea. Islam is a synonym for terrorist, unfortunately, and in any case, Islamic always has a legalist ring, Muslim less so (in Auschwitz slang 'Muslim' meant anyone who had given up the ghost and was resigned to death.) Nishidani (talk) 21:17, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Great! Lets see what others say. I say 'concubinage' because this article should not focus on other forms of sexual slavery, like bacha bazi, forced marriage, forced prostitution, child sexual abuse etc. The RS don't lump all these practices together (for Muslims), so neither should this article.VR _talk 21:16, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

@Anachronist: as we had this discussion, what do you think about having the scope of this article as 'Historic practice of concubinage in Muslim societies'? VR _talk 21:50, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

A similar renaming proposal implies two questions: should this article focus on one particular form of sexual slavery, and should it only deal with the past? The current article is not about the “Historic practice of concubinage in Muslim societies”, and thus asking to rename it as such is incorrect (also the title has been subject of intense disputes, and in general I am personally against using “concubinage” in a title for referring to sexual slavery). As I have explained in this previous discussion, my answer to both questions is no, and I think an article on sexual slavery and Islam that spans epochs and regions, although hard to accomplish, is a worthy challenge. --Grufo (talk) 22:54, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

My answer to both questions is "yes" for a very simple reason: because historic concubinage is a WP:NOTABLE topic on which several RS can be found. Are there RS that try to cover all forms of sexual slavery practices by Muslims across both medieval and modern times? See Persecution by Muslims (AfD). Specific examples of persecution by Muslims are notable (Armenian genocide, Persecution of Bahais etc), but combining all these persecutions into one violates WP:NOTABILITY.VR _talk 23:30, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

As I said before, the scope of both articles needs to be clearly separated. Until that is done, it is premature to talk about renaming this one. If the broader topic of sexual slavery has coverage in reliable sources as does the narrower topic of concubinage, then I favor the broader topic. If the broad topic results in an article too long, they can be split into separate topics, as is the usual practice. ~Anachronist (talk) 03:39, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

@Anachronist: thanks for the response and I agree that defining the scope is more important than any renaming. From my reading, sources seem focused on male-female concubinage and there's no evidence that they conflate it with other forms of sexual slavery. The absence of sources is usually a very good argument on wikipedia for rejecting a scope. Also, if we're going for a broader scope, then there's also the option of merging into History of slavery in the Muslim world.VR _talk 14:24, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

This one should be renamed because while it is widely recognized in scholarship that all three Abrahamic faiths condoned legally or by silence the sexual exploitation of slaves, we only have an article for Islam. Nothing like Sexual slavery in Judaism (a short paragraph, totally ahistorical, exists at Jewish views on slavery, which should be retitled 'Slavery in Jewish/Judaic Tradition' since 'Jewish views' implies an ethnic outlook), Sexual slavery in Christianity (Christian views on slavery hushes it all up, or buries it in vague quotations of ostensible general principle from primary sources). Some years ago, this was indeed the direct problem addressed in a book edited by Bernadette Brooten, Beyond Slavery: Overcoming Its Religious and Sexual Legacies, Palgrave Macmillan 2010 ISBN 978-0-230-11389-3 p.3.

Slavery as a legal institution has existed for most of recorded history and was allowed by Jewish, Christian, and Islamic sacred texts, traditions, and religious nlaw. The forms of slavery varied considerably but shared the underlying concepts of owning a human body. That concept has had a profound impact on Jewish, Christian,. and Islamic thinking about sexuality and about marriage between women and men,. At the same time, these religions have within them the mercy and compassion necessary to overcome slavery and its long-term effects.' p.3 etc.

Or as she summed it up in a more accessible interview at the time.

We want people to take a hard look at the fact that for most of their history, Jews, Christians and Muslims tolerated slavery,” says Brooten. “It’s codified in the writings.” In Jewish law, “a man acquires a wife as one might acquire an enslaved laborer,” says Brooten, “The category is the same.” And this theme of ownership extends to Islam, she adds. “A man has authority over his wife, and authority over his enslaved laborers. In other words, there is a conceptual overlap.” “In classical Islamic law, a man is actually explicitly allowed to have sex with his slave women. In the classical Jewish and Christian texts, owners are not explicitly allowed to have sex with their slave women, but neither are there penalties on them for having done so,” she says. “In Christianity we have found some significant early church writers who show that they are aware that Christian men might be having sex with their slave women and they don’t like it and they preach against it. But when it comes to… Are they going to place a penalty on a man for having done this, they don’t do it.”

The titling has a strong POV slanting that suggests Islam was anomalous to the humanity of the other two. So we have a Judeo-Christian systemic bias which is reading the Islamic part of a common tradition in terms of outrages committed by ISIS and Boko Haram recently, that are read back into the core of Islamic civilization while quietly ignoring the shared roots.

That this is witting seems evident from the simple fact that, when I noted that common legacy in the lead, drawing on books directly attesting to this cross-faith heritage, it was immediately removed, lock stock and barrel, despite the high quality, and thematic pertinence of three academic source.Nishidani (talk) 10:00, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

@Nishidani: we have do Pilegesh, which covers Biblical slave concubinage (Hagar, Bilhah, Zilpah etc). Interestingly the article uses the softer term "maidservant" even though RS agree they were slaves (eg). Also of interest is that Pilegesh does not cover Human trafficking in Israel, nor should it, because the two are totally separate topics. Yet these things are being conflated here, which is why a consensus on scope is so important.VR _talk 14:24, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

• Here are 2 good reads:

• • Hildebrandt-Wypych, Dobrochna, and Wiseman, Alexander W.. Comparative Perspectives on School Textbooks: Analyzing Shifting Discourses on Nationhood, Citizenship, Gender, and Religion. Germany, Springer International Publishing, 2021. Chapter 3 silence of slavery in textbooks ~Laura Dull
  • Močnik, Nena (26 May 2021). "A lesson on war-related sexual violence in a history classroom: Discussion points for educators". Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies. 43 (2, Lessons from Sexual Violence in Mass Atrocity Crimes: Toward Preventive Pedagogies in History Education, editor-in-chief Kira Baker-Doyle). Taylor Francis Online: 103-118. doi:10.1080/10714413.2021.1919005. ISSN 1556-3022.

Synopsis: Atrocities against women need to be accounted for and discussed and not silenced with some or the other excuse and not even with whataboutery. 'Women deserve justice' (read again)

Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 12:26, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

"Women deserve justice" sounds like WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS. Atrocities against women should be covered at Wartime sexual violence. Wartime sexual violence by Muslims is not a notable topic.VR _talk 14:24, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

To take credit one comes ahead saying our kind of slavery is different, when time comes for taking responsibility coming out of same difference the same people finger point elsewhere finding excuses presenting apologetic to censor is strange.

Secondly it is well known fact that there is systemic bias against women issues in Misplaced Pages and I don't feel apologetic to set it right. (And pl do mind the fact where included criticism in the content was over the board I have taken lead to set it right. I have taken lead for equality for Muslims I have taken lead for equality for muslim women I have taken lead for equality for non Muslim women and all in Misplaced Pages parameters)

Technicalities are being employed to sideline encyclopedic merit and silencing issues regarding atrocities on women is the main concern.

Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 14:44, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

Nishidani's edits

1. Under the claim of "NPOV" Nishidani has decided to add text to the opening of the article to make out that sexual slavery is not unique to Islam but is practised in other cultures as well. Leaving aside that the specific mention of Mediterranean is incorrect because sexual slavery was practised all over the world, do we start an article like Marriage in Islam or Polygamy in Islam by talking about the universality of marriage and polygamy across global cultures? Then why do this for sexual slavery in Islam? The opening sentence has to be about Islam and sexual slavery since that is what the article is about. Mcphurphy (talk) 23:16, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Nishidani has decided to add text to the opening of the article to make out that sexual slavery is not unique to Islam but is practised in other cultures as well.

That is what several sources explicitly state. I gave the evidence. You erased it.

the specific mention of Mediterranean is incorrect because sexual slavery was practised all over the world

What has that got to do with the price of chips? 'Mediterranean' is in the source quoted. If one says, 'honour and shame' are important social values in 'Mediterranean' societies ( J. G. Peristiany, Honour and Shame: The Values of Mediterranean Society, University of Chicago Press, 1974 ISBN 978 -0-226-65714-1), the intention is not to imply something unique to the former and thereby implicitly deny those binary concepts are practiced elsewhere. Grasping at straws.Nishidani (talk) 10:31, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

2. Nishidani has decided to give equal weight in the very beginning of the article to traditionalist interpretations and modernist interpretations of Islamic law despite the centuries of jurisprudence behind the former. I am not against including the revisionist modern interpretations. Indeed, we already had them in our article. But it should be written towards the end of the lead to reflect that the modernist interpretations defy the consensus of traditional Islamic scholarship and is a new interpretation of Islamic law without precedent in mainstream Islam. Mcphurphy (talk) 23:16, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Mā malakat aymānukum ('those whom your right had possesses') in the Qur'an and later juridic rulings refers to the twofold aspect of enslavement: the acceptance of it as a practice endorsed by tradition and (b) regard for the welfare of those reduced to slavery. Our text ignores this, and highlights predatorial screwing. Of course, like Christianity, Islam observed the exhortations to treat slaves with respect more in the breach than the observance.Nishidani (talk) 10:29, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

Moreover, it seems Nishidani has not even read the Mufti source which they have cited to support the distinction between traditionalists allowing sexual slavery and modernists disallowing it. Nowhere in this source does it say modernists don't allow sex with slaves and only traditionalists do. This makes out Nishidani's sentence of "Islamic law has traditionalist and modernist interpretations, and the former allowed men to have sexual intercourse with their female slaves" to be a case of WP:SYNTH Mcphurphy (talk) 23:16, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

If you cannot again construe the prose of your interlocutor, then desist from arguing and stick to editwarring. I nowhere asserted that 'modernists don't allow sex with slaves and only traditionalists do.' Modernists generally ignore the tradition (as an embarrassment) as archaic and no longer part of modern societies.I read the source, rather than, like the editor who introduced it, cherrypicking and distorting one phrase from p.5. Nishidani (talk) 10:29, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

3. The references to Islam encouraging manumission of slaves in the lead are also WP:UNDUE and sidetrack the focus of the article. While Islam certainly considers emancipating slaves to be a virtuous deed, it still allowed slavery it and made way for it. Mcphurphy (talk) 23:16, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Why is noting that Islam both endorsed slavery and, on the basis of Mohammad's own words, orchestrated principles of manumission, undue? All you have is a personal assertion. Nishidani (talk) 10:29, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

Nishidani used scholarly sources to give the article context. Your removal and above explanation sounds like WP:IDONTLIKEIT.VR _talk 23:31, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages articles must be based on what relevant reliable sources say. If the reliable source said "Mediterranean" cultures, then it supports Mediterranean cultures (and does not support statements about central-American cultures). Since the founders of Islam had contact with Mediterranean cultures this is relevant - the founders of Islam did not have contact with central-American cultures, so the practice in central-America is not relevant.-- Toddy1 (talk) 11:56, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

I would propose to begin the article with “I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying”. If anyone protests I will say that a source said it (Oscar Wilde). A Misplaced Pages editor decides what to quote, not a source. Islam was not even born in the Mediterranean. --Grufo (talk) 15:16, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

On the contrary, Grufo, the Islamic Prophet Muhammad went to Syria many times. Within 30 years of Muhammad's death, Damascus was the capital of the Muslim world. There is an entire scholarly book that "shows that Christian and Muslim inhabitants of the Mediterranean shared a set of assumptions and practices that amounted to a common culture of slavery".VR _talk 15:25, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

I am sure the contacts were strong, but Mediterranean culture was not the root culture of Islam, and probably we would have a different religion if it had been – this last statement is not falsifiable, thus may not count. --Grufo (talk) 15:37, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

Who said anything about the root culture? And what is that anyway? Islam's formation is impossible to grasp without the Jewish/Christian background, just as Islamic law and culture is incomprehensible without the profound impact of Greek philosophy etc. Don't contradict sources by shifting the goalposts.Nishidani (talk) 16:06, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

Opening an article about Islam with an introduction about slavery in the Mediterranean is the goalpost shift. I did not contradict sources – although, with a bit of time available, I might do that too, as I doubt there is anything typically Mediterranean in the sexual exploitation of slaves. If you want a proper introduction of that kind in the lead, it should speak about Arabian Peninsula and pre-Islamic Arabic culture; and it must not have whataboutistic purposes, it must simply lead to where sexual slavery in the scriptures might come from (and no, it does not come from Mediterranean culture). --Grufo (talk) 16:58, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

Agreed with Grufo. I read the reply above which was difficult to find because Nishidani broke my comment in order to do so. But what they have said does not answer my arguments. Placing a sentence at the very beginning of an article about Sexual slavery and Islam on Mediterranean culture is both undue and a deflection from the subject of the article. And it makes no sense because sexual slavery was also a part of many other ancient cultures, not just Mediterranean. What's with the attempt to make this article out to be about the Mediterranean? Mcphurphy (talk) 03:15, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

This would be correct if you planned to only talk about the subject with respect to the Arabian Peninsula: since this article appears to clutch at the entire gamut of Muslim history and the Islamic World, the background of the entire Islamic world is appropriate. Iskandar323 (talk) 13:54, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

The objection raised by both Mcphurphy and Grufo has been met with the this responsive edit, in compliance with our obligation to edit collaboratively.Nishidani (talk) 14:39, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

(a)If both of you cannot grasp the difference between what a sentence states, and what a reader can imagine it might be implying, in their imaginations, then dialogue becomes impossible. You are both making inferences that complicate a simple source-based commonplace.

'Sexual slavery in Islam' begins awkwardly in medias res, unlike all standard articles.

Islamic law allows men to have sexual intercourse with their female slaves.

compare the incipits of the similar Jewish views on slavery

Jewish views on slavery are varied both religiously and historically. Judaism's ancient and medieval religious texts contain numerous laws governing the ownership and treatment of slaves - -.The original Israelite slavery laws found in the Hebrew Bible bear some resemblance to the 18th-century BCE slavery laws of Hammurabi.

and Christian views on slavery

Christian views on slavery are varied regionally, historically and spiritually. Slavery in various forms has been a part of the social environment for much of Christianity's history, spanning well over eighteen centuries. In the early years of Christianity, slavery was an established feature of the economy and society in the Roman Empire.

In both we have a generalization about variation over time (exactly corresponding to my point, rapidly erased, about 'traditionalist' vs 'modernist'.

In both we have a broader historical context. For Judaism, slavery under Hammurabi; for Christianity, slavery in the Roman Empire.

So, when I modulated the blunt lead sentence to put this on an equal footing with the style of the other two related articles, I was doing nothing abnormal or off my own bat.

The sexual exploitation of slaves by their owners was a common practice in Mediterranean societies, and had persisted, with distinct legal differences, among the three Abrahamic religious , since antiquity.'

The arguments above about WP:Undue - the most subjective weapon in POV pushing -don't hold water, also because as one can see, the adjustment makes this lead perfectly consonant with the examples from the leads of two related articles. The others, about imagined inferences, or tautologies, idem. I will restore the text.Nishidani (talk) 13:38, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

List of useful references

• Two Classes of “Marriage”: Race and Sexual Slavery in Al-Shabaab-Controlled Somalia ~ Lindsay J. Benstead & ORCID Icon & Daniel Van Lehman, tandfonline.com 18 Jun 2021

• Gendered and Ethnic Captivity and Slavery in Safavid Persia: A Literature Review by Ladan Rahbari 14 January 2021

• Gender and modern-day slavery in Nigeria: A critical analysis of baby factory and terrorism ~ Mary Juachi Eteng & et alia May–June 2021

• A Treatise on Zinā in the Early Sokoto Caliphate Muḥammad Bello’s al-Qawl al-Marham＊ ~ KARIYA, Kota 40C-BYht0pts:/YBtYBctsp-/rYBteaCc/i:vto0m101,

• Yesterday is not Gone, Memories of Slavery in Zanzibar and Oman in Memoirs, Fiction, and Film ~ Emily Jane O’Del, Brilll

Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 15:36, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 04:16, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the sources. They are useful for verifiability, but they can't establish notability for "sexual slavery in Islam ", as each of the sources is focused on a particular region and time period.VR _talk 14:26, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

A 'list' article will help ?

Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 14:39, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

WP:NLIST says "a list topic is considered notable is if it has been discussed as a group or set by independent reliable sources".VR _talk 14:54, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

Okay over all that means what remains is matter of time and how to provide encyclopedic space. Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 14:59, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

• @Toddy1: If there are any useful talk page discussions, just replying to them will keep them live and prevent automatic archiving. Iskandar323 (talk) 08:07, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

Defining the scope of this article

The scope of this article should be the history of concubinage in the Muslim world because that is what meets WP:GNG. (Concubinage is defined, in the Islamic context, as the practice of men having sexual relationships with their female slaves)

WP:GNG is met by these sources: Concubines and Courtesans covers pre-modern concubinage in the Muslim world across 7th-18th centuries, Queens, Eunuchs and Concubines in Islamic History, 661-1257 covers it for a shorter period; there is an entry for concubinage in the following encyclopedias: Medieval Islamic Civilization, Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān, Encyclopaedia of Islam, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Women, Islam: A Worldwide Encyclopedia, Historical Dictionary of Women in the Middle East and North Africa.

By contrast Mcphurphy insists that the scope must be "all the historical instances of sexual slavery practised by Muslims, including more modern cases". Does Mcphurphy realize just how broad that topic is? Here are some of the forms of sexual slavery practised by Muslims:

• Sex trafficking in Malaysia, in Indonesia, in Kygyzstan, in Brunei, in Kazakhstan etc. Forced prostitution in the Middle East.
• Forced marriage (a type of sexual slavery) happens in many Muslim-majority countries (see also Vani). Child marriage is practiced in several Muslim-majority countries (some have connected it to age of Aisha at marriage).
• Muslim men had sexual relations with their male slaves in Turkey, India etc.
• Grufo said bacha bazi, a form of sexual slavery in Afghanistan, should be included in this article. Other forms of child sexual slavery: child sex tourism which happens in Muslim countries too; and Muslims were involved in Kasur child sexual abuse scandal and Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal. 

Where are the RS that conflate all these into a single topic? I have seen sources cover various forms of sexual slavery in a specific context (eg this covers various forms sexual slavery during Indonesian genocide). But "all the historical instances of sexual slavery practised by Muslims" no more passes WP:GNG than "all the historical instances of sexual slavery practised by Christians" (or Hindus, or atheists, etc). In fact the only "Sexual slavery in X" article that exists is Sexual slavery in China, which is a stub and limits itself to modern China. So sexual slavery in Islam is a glaring exception, and given that it fails WP:GNG, it seems like an WP:ATTACK page. 

Previously, Persecution by Muslims was deleted due to WP:SYNTH and non-notability (even though instances of persecution by Muslims are individually notable, like Armenian genocide, persecution of Bahais etc). Pederasty in the Middle East and Central Asia was similarly deleted for WP:SYNTH and POV-pushing issues.VR _talk 02:38, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Clarification: Grufo only supported the inclusion of bacha bazi, but did not refer to other forms of child sexual slavery, as they pointed out here.VR _talk 18:44, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

I agree, I think it is pretty sensible to draw the line for the examples in this article at the close of the Ottoman Empire. Concubinage and sexual slavery are both archaic terms for archaic practices, and, following both abolition, and the nation-building and nationalism of the 20th century, it makes more sense to define most 20th to 21st-century examples of kidnapping and sexual enslavement in the Middle East and wherever as, just as you say, "Sexual trafficking in XYZ country" - even then, some of the example here would not qualify, such a that of Boko Haram references: you wouldn't even use these in an article called "Sexual trafficking in Nigeria", because it would be stupidly imprecise. It is only really relevant to: "Sexual trafficking by Boko Haram" or simple inclusion on the Boko Haram page. Anyone who thinks Boko Haram is even tangentially useful as an example of long-term practice in Islam is a moron. For a start, Nigeria has a Muslim-led government that is waging war against it as the terrorist cult that it is. Secondly, it's ridiculously fringe - it's founding preacher discourages reading any book other than the Qur'an, including the Hadith and Sunna, believes the earth is flat and that evaporation as a concept is fake news. Boko Haram is the worst example, but all of the examples in the "Modern/recurrent manifestations" section are ridiculously tangential. Iskandar323 (talk) 07:39, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Agreed. Nishidani, Toddy1 do you have any opinions on the scope? VR _talk 13:22, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

I would prefer that this article were renamed to a title that made it clearer what the scope is. I would prefer something on the lines of: The practice of sexual slavery in Islamic societies. Where sexual slavery is practised by criminal gangs that should be out of scope unless it is part of the normal in that society over a long period.

If you want cut-off date(s), then I think that cut-off date(s) should be in the title - for example The practice of sexual slavery in Islamic societies before 1973. I do not care whether there is a cut-off date, as long as it is clear.-- Toddy1 (talk) 15:34, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

@Toddy1: practices like child marriage has been practiced in Muslim countries for centuries, human trafficking has been practiced for at least decades now, vani and bacha bazi are old too. But I just don't see RS that connect all these practices together across the entire Muslim world.

What is your opinion on narrowing the scope of this to only the premodern practice of a man having sexual relations with his female slave? That is clear and well supported by RS.VR _talk 16:13, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

I do not see any connection between child marriage and slavery. For example, Isabella of Angoulême she was 11 or 12 years old when she married King John of England, and Aisha was 6 or 7 when she married the Prophet Muhammad. I think we would count both cases as child marriage, but neither bride was a slave. Some societies give men and women a choice about who they marry, and some do it another way such as the families deciding - but that does not make a woman a slave.

Human trafficking has always gone on. If you watch a TV programme called Interpol Calling made in 1959-60 there are two episodes that deal with slavery in the then present day: episodes 7 ("You Can't Die Twice") and 13 ("Slave Ship"). Episode 7 is about the trafficking of refugees from Eastern Europe to the U.S.A. where the criminal gang that trafficked them insists on receiving a huge proportion of their earnings; it is a very good description of what modern axctivists call "modern slavery".-- Toddy1 (talk) 17:09, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

I agree that child marriage shouldn't be covered here. But that's exactly what will happen under the broad scope of "sexual slavery" (here is a scholarly source that says "child marriage is a form of sexual slavery..."). That's why I think its import to limit the topic to "men having sexual relations with female slaves".VR _talk 17:34, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

@Vice regent: I have talked about bacha bazi, but I did not say anything about “Other forms of child sexual slavery”. I have split your bullet list to make this clear (please check the diff). --Grufo (talk) 01:18, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

'Female slavery in Muslim world'

Slavery in Islamic world in general and female slavery in Islamic world are distinct phenomenon, which deserves some credit and some accountability both (as available in source–able content), hence do deserve distinct articles.

Though mostly it is historical but attempts and apologetics favoring revivalism has been observed time and again in some of global pockets.

Hence I suggest broader topic 'Female slavery in Muslim world'

Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 05:29, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

I think this is thinking in the right direction, but making the subject even broader like this may not be entirely helpful. For example, he category of "female slaves" would also include women enslaved purely for labour, such as domestic chores. The wider problem with this article is that it currently covers both concubinage (which depending on the epoch of history could involve concubines who were enslaved or free), sexual slavery more broadly, up to an including fringe terrorist groups and cults, as well as other weird examples and a litany of other abusive scenarios involving rape and kidnapping that do not necessarily fit into or act as useful examples of long-term historic practices. I'm thinking it would be more appropriate to use the slightly wordier title of Concubinage and sexual slavery in the Muslim world, which I think would more adequately cover the range of examples that we have on hand here. The broader and sometimes rather generic material on Islamic views on concubinage and slavery should all be split off/copied into Islamic views on slavery and Islamic views on concubinage, with this article only containing brief summaries of such content, with redirects to the main articles. Iskandar323 (talk) 07:18, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

See what I have gone through some recent research books, in middle east agriculture slavery was very small but it was there. Usually what has been happening is elite slavery in Turkey in Ottoman times had been taking all the lime light but slow but steady research in non–elite Ottoman times Muslim world slavery beyond Turkey is coming up.

Female slavery in Muslim world was much more complex phenomenon. At some times African female slaves were used just for domestic duties and European and Asian female slaves were used for sexual to concubinage to marital levels, again it's very fluid nothing is hard and fast. So in some cases domestic and sexual female slavery might appear distinct but again complexity is Islamic law does not distinguish between slaves as sex slaves concubines or domestic duty slaves. Again takfiri was too simple to claim a Muslim tO be non Muslim and give treatment like Kafir women in conflict times. So situation for individual females was much fluid. So accordingly we need to have a article title IMHO.

Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 08:28, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Medieval Muslim literature and legal documents show that those female slaves whose main use was for sexual purposes were distinguished in markets from those whose primary use was for domestic duties. They were called "slaves for pleasure" or "slave-girls for sexual intercourse". - this sentence in the intro (possibly from Pernilla), seems to suggest that there were discrete concepts for domestic and sexual roles - albeit, it's one sentence from where I know not. Regardless, it certainly does seem that, at least conceptually, there is a separate body of Islamic legal thinking about the dilemmas entailed in sexual intercourse with a slave - all the points about when it is permissable, etc. Iskandar323 (talk) 08:40, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

We will need to check what individual scholars say, but prima facie, if that would have been strict case then percentage of Zina cases vis a vis female slaves would have increased exponentially in historical records, but I sincerely doubt that. At the first opportunities British consulates provided we see records of flights of slaves including female ones. If female slaves and even formally married women have had easy way to bring in Zina charges against their masters or husbands, they would have exploited that course of action in their benefit at least to an extent but that does not seem to have happened.

Even if one keeps matter of consent aside, basic scripture is sort of clear that woman possessed by right hand is okay for sexual intercourse. So even if one buys a female slave for domestic purpose but later if he feels to have to do religious scriptures unlikely to stop.

What would have happened in those cases, where female sex slaves did not bear any child? If the story was true then the case of Anarkali is quite intriguing. Jahangir is religious enough fellow to inscribe gods names on cenotaph, writes freely on love in memoir, builds a tomb but skips naming the woman officially, Akabar too punishes Anarkali but does not do any thing to Jahangir, one possibility is possible fluidity in case of female slaves not having master's child, even in cases of emancipated female slaves.

Other than Turkish elite female slaves other cases including female slavery in early Islamic period including Al Andalus, middle east, South and central Asia, Persia, is not thoroughly researched and whatever available adequate note has not been taken in WIkipedia. For example article on Islamic marriage contract in Misplaced Pages is under covered even for contemporary purposes then historical marriage contracts and mentions related to slavery in them is later step. Article Umm Walad has not gone beyond couple of paragraphs, and we don't have any article on Tedbir at all.

Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 10:03, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

• @Bookku: would "female slavery in the Muslim world" cover the modern enslavement of women through forced labor and debt bondage? Can you provide some sources that broadly cover all these forms in a way that is specific to women? VR _talk 13:20, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

IMO in just forced labor and debt bondage there is nothing specific Muslim about; "female slavery in the Muslim world" (Partially of Islamic cultural character) is a distinct fluid phenomenon.

• Women (specially of other religion or other sects or declaring their families Kafir)

• Either taking them captive in conflict zones,
• Or Purchasing selling or sharing them as gift
• Considering them available for sexual pleasure without marrying and reducing their consent to irrelevance or less relevance
• Not considering their (non–marital) sexual relationship equal to Islamic Nikah (marraige) wife.
• Making normalizing claims like if women from conflict zones or purchased or gifted slave women remain alone will cause Zina (But captivating/ purchasing/ gifting/ watching or manhandling them sans veil; establishing non–marital sexual relationship when aquired them as property then is not Zina); there after putting or condoning conditions (tedbir) for their emancipation;
• On credit side some of the slave women may be eventually consenting to sexual demands or slavery in anticipation of better life standard or by stockholm syndrome, taking some of them in marriage if eventually they agree for religious conversion and so on, 'genderedly' equal right in property to children of female slaves (with comparatively lesser social stigma for children of female slaves) if slave owner accepts paternity.

All of above features are complex enough to explain I do not know how to put them in most brief manner amount to distinct female slavery of Islamic nature. This has happened in pre modern times and fewer but certain cases in modern times.

If any modern community at certain time and place behaves like premodern then whether to club them or not is the question we are dealing with. rather than answering it I will leave it for other users to reflect upon.

Thanks Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 14:34, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

The problems in a range of articles are deep and not easily ironed out. As noted, the title is anomalous, and the anomaly recapitulates one of a congeries of deep prejudices in Western civilization: sex and slavery. We have articles on Jewish and Christian views on slavery but, with the third member of the Abrahamic religions, we have specific articles on 'Islamic lubricity', the salacious sexual opportunism of the Muslim world. Norman Daniel wrote a great pathbreaking books on this a half century ago (Islam and the West: The Making of an Image (1960), documenting how deeply grounded confessional enmity against a rival faith was for Christians for well over a thousand years. Coming across this, I felt that it harked back to that tradition, despite using the modern scholarship that, in the wake of Daniel's lesson, grappled with Islam's less censorious approach to sex, and, in some regards, its more refined attempt to secure legal definitions finessing types of slavery to include rights to emancipation, or social mobility, a scholarship that dispensed with the condescending and hypocritical hauteur of Western tradition, which had a longer and arguably far more violent history of carceral enslavement than was the general case in Islam. The two articles here one on concubinage, and this lurid POV mess, should, in my view, be merged in to something like Concubinage and female slavery in the Muslim world, which would have two aspects, the legal tradition stricto sensu and actual practice. The topicalization of 'sexual slavery' in the title, uniquely for Islam, attracts prurient eyes looking for an itchy sexual angle on Muslims, fully in accordance with ancient prejudices rooted in religious rivalry. Daniel remarks, 'By misapprehension and misrepresentation an idea of the beliefs and practices of one society can pass into the accepted myths of another society in a form so distorted that its relation to the original facts is sometimes barely discernible.' (p.2)-

Whatever the title choice made, covering the topic requires considerable hard, persistent and focused labour by several hands. We can talk all day about the niceties of language, but only practical rewriting of at least two long texts from top to bottom is going to remedy the fixated POV pushing we have ended up with here.Nishidani (talk) 14:59, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

@Nishidani: the first step in this long process is determining a reasonable scope, as that will establish organization, WP:DUE-ness and relevance of content. The propose here isn't about title change (that would require a WP:RM) but about establishment of scope. Any feedback is appreciated.VR _talk 15:06, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

@Nishidani: Neutral and well informed of religion people like you do not write on Misplaced Pages separate articles on subjects like 'Women's rights in Muslim societies', 'History of marriage contract in Islam', Tedbir and do not complete articles like Umm walad then how western people will know all the greatness?

You also do not write articles on 'Slavery in Mecca and Medina', 'Female slavery in early Islam', 'Female slavery in middle east', 'Female slavery in Al Andalus', 'Female slavery in Central Asia' then how western people will know all the greatness? And yes we need not forget Female slavery in Persia too! But unless written articles what is point in not forgetting and talking of just greatness.

Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 16:15, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

I second Nishidani's idea of "Concubinage and female slavery in the Muslim world" - for two reasons: first, the big problem with "sexual slavery" as a term is that it is fundamentally anachronistic, as a term not really formalised or widely used until the 1998 Rome Statute. Female slavery already conveys the implicit lack of volition that such an individual had over their destiny, sexual or otherwise; secondly, this framing partially resolves the medieval/modern dissonance by better framing the article in terms of pre-modern terms. Slavery came to the end in most places somewhere between the late 19th century and the post-WWII 1948 UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is therefore pretty possible and practical to draw a distinction between pre-modern concubinage/female slavery and modern iterations, particularly those lingering on into the 21st century, which might be better termed sexual slavery or sex trafficking in line with the contemporary terminology. Iskandar323 (talk) 17:06, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

I support concubinage as part of the scope. But "female slavery" would cover women in debt bondage, forced labor, forced begging, which all happen in the Muslim world (see this map). Hence I recommend limiting scope to concubinage.VR _talk 17:34, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

I don't see female slavery as covering those three other practices at all. These types of thing are sometimes called "modern slavery", which is a term that specifically distinguishes itself from the slavery of yore. Modern slavery typically involves some sort of coercion, typically either related to debt or the threat of violence, in contrast to pre-modern slavery, which was the simple, contractual ownership of another human being. That graphic uses data from 2013, so clearly modern. Iskandar323 (talk) 18:51, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

@Iskandar323: I think as soon as you put the word "slavery" in the scope or title, people will automatically assume it also covers modern slavery. Why not just leave the scope at "Concubinage in the Muslim world"? What does "female slavery" convey that "concubinage" does not?VR _talk 19:02, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Two reasons: some of the sources clearly discuss the issue of sexual intercourse with female slaves without reference to the word concubinage, which means you would be somewhat decontextualizing these sources by only reflecting "concubinage" in the title. Secondly, some systems, like the Ottoman one, were highly complex and had multiple different institutional layers, including free concubines, slave-concubines and also female slaves more generally. On the other point, I can't overemphasize how distinct a term modern slavery is. It is hyper-specific to the modern era, and also includes sex trafficking and the use of child soldiers. However, if you really think this would be a legitimate source of confusion, I would suggest a comprehensive top-of-the-page disambiguation would solve it. Iskandar323 (talk) 20:21, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

@Iskandar323: which sources refer to this phenomenon without using the term 'concubinage'? Still we could use the term "slave-concubine" which would exclude free mistresses. Finally, it is really not necessary to have just one article to cover every sexual relationship that happened in 1,400 years of Muslim history spanning three continents. It is better to have separate articles for different kinds of relationships, for different time periods, for different places. Trying to fit everything into a single article will lead to issues like GNG vio.VR _talk 20:31, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

a) All female slaves were not automatically concubines, Some owners used to marry their female slaves to some third person in that case those female slaves were official mistresses of third persons and not concubines.

b) Some female slaves would have been usually just domestic workers but available for sex on demand and did not bear child. So blanket use of word concubinage does not cover them and would misrepresent actual fluidity

c) There are reports of instances from early Islamic times that 'a ruler used to reprimand female slaves for using veils or dressing like free women and on the other hand some clergy used to express disapproval for female slaves moving around bare chested and complaining ruler not taking action as expected by clergy' (I suppose RS would be available for such instances where discussion is just about female slaves and not about concubinage. Where would one put those instances if wording concubinage is used in blanket manner?

Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 02:25, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

As per Encyclopedia of Islam concubine refers to a female slave who is her master's sexual partner, which includes those who didn't bear a child. In any case, the WP:ONUS is on you to show how your proposed scope meets WP:GNG. You have so far provided no sources, whereas I have provided several showing the topic of concubinage across 7th-18th centuries meets GNG.VR _talk 03:06, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

IDK which Arabic, Persian and Turkish words are translated as concubines even when Islam had no third official category other than wife and slave and how any such fundamentally wrong authorship are being elevated to reliable.

At least spare the article title with more neutral term by using just 'female slavery in Muslim world' which can incorporate all kind of possibilities and difficulties suffered by ancestral X (feminine) chromosome of modern Muslims as sources become available.

See I don't have Phd in WP technicalities, I do understand simple logic and simple merit. No doubt Wikipedians can restart discussions as and when sources become available but first it involves lot of time of writers. Many writers write as sources come before them, starting with narrow scope unnecessarily discourages them. I prefer curators and censor friendly enthusiasm does not suffocate an article in the bud itself.

Encyclopedias deserve space for summary style articles too. I would be okay with taking the whole article to draft space again rather than suffocating it in the name of scope.

Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 04:10, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

The reason why I agreed with Nishidani's suggestion of both terms is that it bridges the inherent ambiguity and confusion between the different sources. You have cited an encyclopedia definition of a concubine as a female slave, but evidently this is not definitive, as we know there could be free concubines even in the Islamic world. I agree with Bookku that the fluidity of many master-slave relationships is key, as a slave might in practice readily by a domestic servant one day and a concubine the next, or vice versa, or both, as Bookku points out, where female slaves could become concubines (or even wives!) of men other than their masters. Iskandar323 (talk) 06:41, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

I checked the Encyclopedia of Islam entry and it covers concubine being wife of one man, but a domestic servant for another. And this book does have a chapter on 'free' concubines but it says it was relatively rare, and most were slaves. So sources are using the term 'concubinage' pretty broadly. I think we're on the same page in terms of scope - as long as the scope is treated coherently in RS (and is not being constructed by synthesizing RS on entirely different topics).VR _talk 12:52, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

• Agree that the title is too broad and misleading. I suggest restricting the scope to the conubinage and move the out of scope content to other pages like Islamic views on slavery. --Mhhossein 05:25, 6 November 2021 (UTC)
• Sexual slavery in the Islamic world would be a good compromise. We can also include some content on child marriage in Islam - a practice which all traditionalist ulama permit. Mcphurphy (talk) 06:52, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

You are conflating entirely different concepts, so-called "child marriage" and slavery.
Regarding so-called "child marriage", English law was changed in 1929 - before then a marriage was only valid if the boy was at least 14 and the girl was at least 12 - but from 1929 both the boy and the girl had to be at least 16. In addition, since 1929 the consent of parents was required for people getting married under 18. (I think at one time the consent of parents was required for people under 21.) There was absolutely no connection between slavery and 12 year old girls getting married before 1929.-- Toddy1 (talk) 11:09, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

As Toddy1 notes, child marriage is unrelated to slavery as a theme and primarily a matter related to national laws. Iskandar323 (talk) 11:45, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

First part of this specific comment is without any religion or people of any religion in mind. I do not insist bringing child marriages in blanket manner under slavery. But consider following points a & b:

a) Any child's consent for any sexual relationship would be immature need to be considered void if at all existed, is matter of common sense and most would agree and RS would be available from psychology and medical sciences side that it ought to be considered void. In a way, child's consent for any sexual relationship with an adult within marriage too is sexual slavery by grooming but for a while we keep this point aside.

b) Consider a case child's consent is clearly absent. If any – emphasis to word 'any', so pl don't do whataboutery– if any child marriage is consummated by an adult without child's consent then technically that would be clear example of sexual slavery–irrespective of child's parents consent exists or not. Here what is important is availability of reliable sources. Here is a little irony, we humans are less likely to insist for reliable sources in case a where sexual consent would be assumed as part of –even child– marriage but do all of the children consenting to marriage would be aware of concept of sex and implication? We are more likely to insist for reliable sources in case b. If not getting the point pl. do read a and b points again understand RS need to be asked for availability of consent in individual cases of point a, where as if we ask for RS in case b that should amount systemic bias on part of encyclopedist because even where supposedly consent exists can not be valid enough then in those cases where consent is doubtful or absent is necessarily sexual slavery

Second part of this comment, with the association of religious background:

Now let us come to one example of the case of 'Jilfidan' where reliable reference is available. A captive child has been bought and added to so called concubinage. Later behaviour of Jilfidan before her child and society would seem as if relationship of so called concubinage was consensual or was groomed for the same or accepted as fate, once you have child or because any way a slave can't marry without masters permission with some third person, later no one would know. So it is total fluid we can not determine in modern times without clear source to that effect.

( Also pl do not do whataboutery on point that whether Jilfidan or her daughter took services of other slaves because controversy of they clearly not objecting to slavery do not erase memory of their own relation in to slavery as a slave narrative.)

Emily Ruete's description of kidnapping and enslavement of her mother 'Jilfidan' becomes one of closest available testimony about a captive female slave. Until Ruete's mother did not get sold to her father she was a common (non-elite) slave but purchasing by Ruete's father made her an elite slave (concubine) later.

Emily Ruete about captivity of her mother 'Jilfidan'

"...My mother was a Circassian by birth, who in early youth had been torn away from her home. Her father had been a farmer, and she had always lived peacefully with her parents and her little brother and sister. War broke out suddenly, and the country was overrun by marauding bands ; on their approach the family fled into an underground place, as my mother called it — she probably meant a cellar, which is not known in Zanzibar. Their place of refuge was, however, invaded by a merciless horde, the parents were slain, and the children carried off by three mounted Arnauts. One of these, with her elder brother, soon disappeared out of sight; the other two, with my mother and her little sister, three years old, crying bitterly for her mother, kept together until evening,when they too parted, and my mother never heard any more of the lost ones as long as she lived.

She came into my father's possession when quite a child, probably at the tender age of seven or eight years, as she cast her first tooth in our house..."

Translation from books original language German as available on archive.org There is a minor difference in translation available on Google books.

Now one can excuse child captivity and slavery can happen without religion or with other religion too but a) it's likely religious sanction in the pattern it works associates with the given religion. b) The pattern in case of Muslim societies due to given religion is unique so encyclopedic association with pattern of Muslim kind of slavery becomes valid.

She came into my father's possession when quite a child, probably at the tender age of seven or eight years, as she cast her first tooth in our house..." Here Jilfidan had no parental support to see she bears at least age of puberty is being taken into account again sans record ironically one needs to consider captors and buyer took due care. In any case if a Sultan had dozens of concubines wording concubine instead of sex slave is just being shy and not calling spade a spade?

Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 12:46, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

Put very simply, marriage does not involve ownership or possession, unlike slavery, which explicitly involves ownership. As long as this article is entitled slavery, material on anything short of examples of explicit ownership arrangements is misplaced - hence the need to actually decide on the right title and scope of this piece as a matter of priority. If this article were entitled Concubinage and female slavery then discussion of the age of concubines in concubinage arrangements, which often blurred the boundaries between slavery, servanthood and wifehood, might be appropriate - although I would be expecting some slightly more substantial academic backing for this sort of content than anecdotal Ottoman examples. Iskandar323 (talk) 16:38, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

A reverse approach

I would like to propose a short brainstorming using a reverse approach; instead of asking what the article should be about, or what its name should be, I would like to ask: What would an article named “Sexual slavery in Islam” talk about if you, as a Misplaced Pages editor, had to write it? My question does not imply that you will have to write it, or even that Misplaced Pages should have one (although my personal position about it is known), but aims only at knowing whether the current title maps what the editors think a similar title means. We can still agree on what “Sexual slavery in Islam” means but disagree on the fact that Misplaced Pages should have a page named as such, but we would at least make one point clear. Each of you could be asked by a friend “Tell me all you know about sexual slavery in Islam”; what will your answer be? As I had previously written, the answer for me would be “How Islam addresses/addressed the topic of sexual slavery” – where by “addressing” I mean scriptural interpretations, laws and practices. This page has generated a WP:POVFORK; obviously the authors of the WP:POVFORK claim that it is not a WP:POVFORK, and for doing that they must defend something similar to “The scope of Sexual slavery in Islam – not just the current content, but even the best possible version of it, the one that I would write – diverges from what I want to do with this other page”. So how do they define the scope of a “Sexual slavery in Islam” article? --Grufo (talk) 18:28, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

The question is not how you and I define such a topic but how sources define that topic. Without sources, answering your question would be an exercise in WP:Original research.VR _talk 21:02, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

The scope of an article does not need to be supported by sources, only the content needs to be supported by sources. Misplaced Pages has plenty of articles that are not findable in any source “as such”. I couldn't find much on Misplaced Pages guidelines (you are welcome to quote it in this discussion if you find anything), but there is an essay, WP:SCOPE, which does give some advice (emphasis mine):

“Article scope, in terms of what exactly the subject and its scope is, is an editorial choice determined by consensus.”

“Artificially or unnecessarily restricting the scope of an article to select a particular point of view on a subject area is frowned upon, even if it is the most popular point of view. Accidental or deliberate choice of a limited scope for an article can make notable information disappear from the encyclopedia entirely, or make it highly inaccessible. Since the primary purpose of the Misplaced Pages is to be a useful reference work, narrow article scopes are to be avoided.”

So my question still stands: how would editors describe the scope of this page (independently of how it is currently written)? --Grufo (talk) 22:10, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

WP:SCOPE is not policy; WP:GNG is policy and requires "A topic is presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone article or list when it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject." VR _talk 22:21, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

Please read Talk:Sexual slavery in Islam#Defining the scope of this article.-- Toddy1 (talk) 22:22, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

@Vice regent: I believe you are misinterpreting the guideline. This article is covered by reliable sources (even too many someone was complaining). But as that essay suggests, the scope of an article is an editorial choice determined by consensus, and the broader topic should be favored over the narrower one. I believe that this comment by Anachronist was trying to enforce these principles (@Anachronist: any comment is welcome). Look at the sources of Christian views on slavery: is there any source named “Christian views on slavery”? (Answer: NO). --Grufo (talk) 22:34, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

Further addition. WP:PAGEDECIDE (official guidelines) goes also in the direction of favoring broader topics rather than narrower ones. And WP:MERGEREASON gives good reasons for merging the current POVFORK into this page:

“Context: If a short article requires the background material or context from a broader article in order for readers to understand it. For example, minor characters from works of fiction are generally covered in a "List of characters in <work>" article (and can be merged there); see also Misplaced Pages:Notability (fiction).”

(In the specific case of Islamic views on concubinage a reader would need to contextualize the meaning of “concubinage” and embrace an unusual meaning compared to what they are used to, while the broader topic, Sexual slavery in Islam does not require that). --Grufo (talk) 23:02, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

WP:GNG requires the topic of every article to be covered in depth by several reliable sources. This source covers the topic of slavery in Christianity; where are the sources that cover sexual slavery in Islam? The fact that you can't find sources to answer your own question "How Islam addresses/addressed the topic of sexual slavery" is telling.VR _talk 23:18, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

The topic of this article is covered by reliable sources (even too many). The scope of this article instead is something we must decide about. And no, the voice “slavery” in an encyclopedia of Christianity is not “Christian views on slavery”. --Grufo (talk) 23:29, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

Please list 2-3 sources that cover the topic and lets examine them (only 2-3 sources please).VR _talk 23:35, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

As mentioned by Slywriter, with 273 cites source coverage is really not the problem. I will go random:

• Pernilla, Myrne (2019). "Slaves for Pleasure in Arabic Sex and Slave Purchase Manuals from the Tenth to the Twelfth Centuries". Journal of Global Slavery. 4 (2): 196–225. doi:10.1163/2405836X-00402004. S2CID 199952805.
• Brown, Jonathan A. C. (2019). Slavery and Islam. Simon & Schuster. p. 70.
• Ali, Kecia (30 October 2010). Marriage and Slavery in Early Islam. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-05059-4.
• Afary, Janet (9 April 2009). Sexual Politics in Modern Iran. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-39435-3.

--Grufo (talk) 23:53, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

I took a quick look at all 4 sources: all of them cover the topic of men having sex with their female slaves (which they all call either "concubinage" or "slave concubinage"). None of them covers "sexual slavery" as a topic. Afary simply covers everything related to sex in Iran: marriage and concubinage, heterosexuality and homosexuality, temporary marriage, child marriage, polygamy, adultery, fornication, birth control and abortion. Ali covers marriage and concubinage (heterosexual) in early (600-900CE) Islamic theology. Pernilla uses the term "sexual slavery" and "concubinage" interchangeably, but she's only referring to relations between free men and slave women, I didn't find anything on child marriage, child abuse, or sex between free and slave men. Brown also only covers heterosexual concubinage. Of these 4, only Brown's topic is Islam in general, everyone else has a narrower topic. This means that even if Afary covered sexual slavery, it could only be used to support Sexual slavery in Iran - one cannot extrapolate from Iran to the entire Muslim world.VR _talk 02:18, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, everything looks pretty normal. You are describing a situation similar to what happens in Christian views on slavery (on a different topic). --Grufo (talk) 03:15, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

I was baffled by your claim saying "The scope of an article does not need to be supported by sources". When the title and the content of a page is based on the reliable sources, the scope is automatically defined by the reliable sources as long as they are not ORed. --Mhhossein 03:37, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

The scope of an article is an editorial choice and does not need to be supported by sources, only the content does. Think that for Misplaced Pages even having an article that is too big can be enough of a reason to split it, even when all sources treat it as a single topic. And as per WP:PAGEDECIDE, broader topics that do not require contextualization are to be preferred (for instance, Islamic views on concubinage is an example of a page that requires contextualization, even just for its title). --Grufo (talk) 03:55, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

What context is required at Islamic views on concubinage that is currently not already there?VR _talk 04:02, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

The unusual meaning of concubinage in that context requires specialized knowledge. --Grufo (talk) 04:09, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

I was pinged above, so I'll just make a comment. I have no objection to two articles if they are about obviously distinct topics. One article about the history of sexual slavery in Islam and another about current Islamic views, if the topics can be separated, can be fine. I don't really care if it's called slavery or concubinage or sexual slave concubinage or whatever. However, I observe that a concubine isn't necessarily a slave, and if the topic does entail slavery (concubines being forced into nonconsensual sex acts), then we should refer to it that way, per WP:SPADE. Concubinage might imply slavery in an Islamic context, but a reader unfamiliar with the topic wouldn't know that. ~Anachronist (talk) 05:41, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

@Anachronist: thanks for your input. I agree that the body and lead of the article should clarify the slave nature of concubinage in the Islamic context. But the title should be based on WP:COMMONNAME used by RS, though an alternate suggestion was made by Wiqi55 to use "slave concubinage" in the title, which is also supported by RS. Finally, as an aside, do consider the fact that marital rape wasn't criminalized in most countries until the 20th century, as married women were regarded as the property of their husbands.VR _talk 06:17, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

@Vice regent:

• “Used by RS”: That gives zero information about whether it is a specialized usage of the word “concubinage” or not. Are you aware of any other context (not Islam) where concubinage needs to involve slaves?
• “Marital rape wasn't criminalized in most countries”: You are free to write an article on Corinthians 7:4 (I will support you). But if you use this instead as an argument to remove the issue of consent from Sexual slavery in Islam, it is whataboutery.

--Grufo (talk) 06:35, 8 November 2021 (UTC) ----

Back to the original question. What would a page named “Sexual slavery in Islam” talk about according to Wiki editors? Please post your answers below. Please do not post below unrelated discussions.

• “How Islam addresses/addressed the topic of sexual slavery” – where by “addressing” I mean scriptural interpretations, laws and practices. --Grufo (talk) 00:09, 8 November 2021 (UTC) comment deleted by Grufo 01:25, 9 November 2021

• So what you are saying is that you (Grufo) would like this article to be Islamic views on sexual slavery. If that is the case, why do you not propose a WP:RM to that title? I do not know if you have read the many comments at Talk:Sexual slavery in Islam#Defining the scope of this article, but if you have, you will know that some editors disagree with you. But perhaps it would be best to have a WP:RM to resolve this.-- Toddy1 (talk) 10:49, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

As explained in the introduction, this section is not dedicated to what we think this article should become, but to what we think “Sexual slavery in Islam” means. You are free to post your answer in the paragraph below. --Grufo (talk) 01:25, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

This is general comment to all. IMHO we same people are discussing same points again and again. Again lack of substantial participation from women in itself brings in systemic bias. Rather present people take a break from discussion for a some weeks let some fresh users with some fresh perspectives come in.

In mean while I would urge present learned and concerned of women issues guys (I mean users) to update articles like Draft:Sexual politics, Draft:Women, conflict and conflict zones, Umm walad, Islamic marriage contract (including historic perspective vis a vis female slavery), Draft:Women's rights in Muslim societies, Draft:Slavery in Mecca and Medina, Draft:Comparison of rights and limitations of Muslim wives, female slaves and concubines; then we also need to have article Draft:Tedbir, Draft:Women's agency.

I would urge any discussion closing users not to close any discussions at least for six months since we lack sufficient participation from women projects, and present users need to give some more time on actually reading the sources thoroughly even those presented by others. Some one is presenting a source and we respond without reading in minutes would not give justice to the subject. Then lot of fresh academic research is coming up who is going to read new research that too needs time. What sort of hurry we are in to own and shape article in limited time among limited people without sufficient women' project participation?

I am voluntarily delisting this article from my watch list for 3 weeks from now.

Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 12:52, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

The question

Back to the original question. What would a page named “Sexual slavery in Islam” talk about according to Wiki editors? Please post your answers below. Please do not post below unrelated discussions.

• “How Islam addresses/addressed the topic of sexual slavery” – where by “addressing” I mean scriptural interpretations, laws and practices. --Grufo (talk) 00:09, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Fun facts

Just out of curiosity, I googled “concubinage iran”, and the first result I got was:

• Can Iran 'control' its cohabiting couples? - BBC News

I don't know why Google did that, the BBC page does not even contain the word “concubinage”. I guess “concubinage” for meaning “sexual slavery” is not WP:COMMONNAME for Google servers (for which “concubinage” indeed simply means “concubinage”). --Grufo (talk) 03:27, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

• Impressive straw man Grufo - part of the reason for you not getting hits for "sexual slavery" in relation to "Concubinage" is because "sexual slavery" is not, in of itself, a common name for anything. Sexual slavery is barely used as a set term in academic literature, largely because it is redundant. A slave has no free will, so can be used for domestic chores, gladiatorial combat, sex, whatever - their usage is somewhat irrelevant and secondary to their status as a slave. The optional use of slaves for sex was almost universal in slave-owning society, so "sexual slavery" is a fairly redundant term. As Nishidani has pointed out, a more precise term might be "female slavery", because that appears to be the focus. (The sexual use of male slaves is not clearly in evidence.) "Sex slave" is a modern and fetishized term more than it is anything related to ancient slavery, where the term "slave" encompasses potential sexual applications. On the subject of Concubinage, you are literally the only editor here that thinks your ramblings about Roman cohabitation are the main meaning, in a modern sense, of Concubinage. That Iran article link doesn't even use the word Concubinage. Iskandar323 (talk) 08:10, 8 November 2021 (UTC)
• As an allegory for the mild absurdity of the naming of this article, it's a bit like me going over to the pages on gladiators and calling it "Death slavery" or "Mortal combat slavery" - somewhat explanatory, but totally off piste relative to common names, most sourcing and the language of the times. Iskandar323 (talk) 08:19, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Calling every female slave to be either sex slave or concubine for that matter is plain insincerity. Even women used to buy female slaves in fair numbers for domestic core– they were too humiliated but until they were resold one can not label them as sex slave nor as concubine. But as I said earlier this state of being domestic slave is fluid since many of them were resold in the market if the owner did not like slave and again slave could end up in slave market. Again any male buyer could physically touch and examine their private body parts– visible sexual gratification of naked female slave was there and again physical examination of sexual organs not sex slavery? again can get sold to some rich fellow for longer term sexual relation. Too fluid the situation was.

Since sex slavery was there in other parts under other religion some how validated Islamic sanction underplaying importance consent and marriage also sounds unreasonable and insincere. The great religion could have allowed couple of more marriages with war widows with due consent.

May be self claimed great so called great sources if fail to take above simple logic into account can not be called reliable in any sense what so ever. Religions were insincere to humans, humans were insincere to religion, humans were and are insincere to humans, is my sincere opinion.

Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 08:52, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, if English had the category of “death slavery”, gladiators would definitely be categorized as such (who else!). But that is not the case. English possesses the category of “sexual slavery” though – although it did not have even that until not long ago, which explains in the first place why the word “concubine” started to be used for harems' sex slaves, as it was the closest word in the English vocabulary back then. If you went to Shakespeare and said something like “sexual slavery” he might understand all kind of weird things, from “slavery of the genders” to “slavery of your own genitalia”, to I don't know, but hardly what we mean today. If you said to him “concubine” instead, maybe he would not realize that you are talking about a sex slave, but he would get some closer picture. You may read some comments of mine from the old dispute about this, or you might check the etymology of the word “sexual”, whose modern meaning is that of “related to the sexual intercourse”, but whose original meaning was that of “related to the sex of a person, the gender, or the genitalia” – and that was the meaning of “sexual” when the West first described Islamic sex slaves. --Grufo (talk) 21:53, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

• I am new here, but what about something like "History of sexual slavery in the Muslim world"? This way we can separate topics according to different periods and circumstances. Iraniangal777 (talk) 07:01, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

@Iraniangal777: Welcome here. The page separates quite well already; and most importantly, before proposing a renaming you should explain how the current title is problematic, as for several editors that is not the case – anything different than WP:IDONTLIKEIT will do. --Grufo (talk) 07:25, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Requested move 10 November 2021

It has been proposed in this section that History of concubinage in the Muslim world be renamed and moved to Female slavery and concubinage in the Muslim world. A bot will list this discussion on the requested moves current discussions subpage within an hour of this tag being placed. The discussion may be closed 7 days after being opened, if consensus has been reached (see the closing instructions). Please base arguments on article title policy, and keep discussion succinct and civil. Please use {{subst:requested move}}. Do not use {{requested move/dated}} directly. Links: current log • target log • direct move

Sexual slavery in Islam → Female slavery and concubinage in the Muslim world – Following extensive prior discussion on the talk page, I think the time is ripe for broaching the long overdue renaming of this page to something more precise and representative. The proposed change in the switch from "in Islam" to "in the Muslim world" has been advocated for on the basis of the fact the article is largely composed of historic examples in specific places, i.e.: within the Muslim world, whereas "in Islam" suggests some sort of purely religious discussion, which is already covered by the likes of Islamic views on slavery, Islamic views on concubinage, et cetera. The proposed shift from "sexual slavery" to "Female slavery and concubinage" follows the logic of a number of experienced Misplaced Pages editors, such as Bookku and Nishidani, who have noted, among other things, that: Female slavery was a a fluid concept within the historic Muslim world, so there was little distinction between female slaves in general and slaves specifically used for sexual purposes. In many sources, it is almost impossible to distinguish between statements about female slaves in general and those referring specifically to female slaves used for sex. In other sources, the term surriyya is often commonly translated as "concubine", and there are numerous sources that mainly use this term, particularly for the later history, such as regarding the harem structures of the Ottoman Empire, where concubinage took on quite a different meaning from simply "female slaves used for sex". The two terms are therefore both common names for different aspects of the topic and with subtly distinct meanings in many historical settings. Iskandar323 (talk) 10:18, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

• Addendum Ok, so I'm clearly terrible at articulating these things, so I'll just add an addendum framing the key points in terms of WP:TITLE, since that is ultimately the guiding criteria, i.e.: Recognizability, Naturalness, Precision, Concision and Consistency. First, the current title is not a natural fit: Sex slavery is a highly modern term linked to modern prostitution and sex trafficking that is rarely used in sources in reference to historic practice . It is also not precise, as it makes no mention of gender, as this article is entirely about female slaves, and does not use the most common form of academic terminology, which is "concubinage". Female slavery and concubinage in the Muslim world on the other hand, is recognisable on account of the "female slavery" part, which is also consistent with articles such as Female slavery in the United States, as well as natural in relation to the sources, which largely use "concubinage", which is also consistent with the likes of Concubinage in China. Both terms are required to be precise, because not all concubines were female slaves and vice versa. The title is also recognisable overall, because who could not understand, between the two terms, what the article is about? Concubinage is ultimately more precise, but female slavery is probably more recognisable for non-native English speakers, of which Misplaced Pages has many. Iskandar323 (talk) 14:08, 10 November 2021 (UTC)
• Second addendum In a further note on the subject of Consistency, I earlier failed to note the existence of History of slavery in the Muslim world as an extant article, which throws weight behind the alternative title supported by a number of editors of History of concubinage in the Muslim world, which would parallel Islamic views on concubinage in much the same way that History of slavery in the Muslim world parallels Islamic views on slavery. I would happily support either. Iskandar323 (talk) 20:56, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

• Support. My preferred title would be either History of concubinage in the Muslim world or (History of slave concubinage in the Muslim world, as suggested by Wiqi55), but I think Iskandar323's title is better than the current one.VR _talk 11:25, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

• "Concubinage" is the WP:COMMONNAME that is used by most (if not all) sources in the article, as shown here and here.VR _talk 11:52, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  That too. For the uninitiated here, while numerous sources clearly use the terms concubines and concubinage in reference to the general topic of female slaves, servants and sex, Grufo stoically defends the rigid ideological position that concubinage can only refer to "Concubinage (law)". Iskandar323 (talk) 12:00, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose. Concubinage is completely absent from the scope of the article – I wish Misplaced Pages had an article on actual concubinage in Islam – while what is presented is slave concubinage. Furthermore, “Muslim world” is “Islam” by definition. I do not oppose keeping the current title or renaming the article to Islamic views on sexual slavery. --Grufo (talk) 11:38, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  Comment: I fear I may be going over old ground, but most of the article is history and historical examples, so how can it realistically be called "Islamic views" on anything? The title of an established article should ultimately reflect what the article consists of, not what one might like it to consist of. Iskandar323 (talk) 11:49, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  We talk about religions through their concrete manifestations (interpretations, laws and practices). As for the extensive history present, exactly the same thing happens in Christian views on slavery. The only argument in favor of Islamic views on sexual slavery would be the fact that it would be WP:CONSISTENT with the various views on ; but I believe that Sexual slavery in Islam is also well phrased. --Grufo (talk) 12:00, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  We have History of slavery in the Muslim world so the proposed title would be WP:CONSISTENT with that.VR _talk 12:01, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  I somewhat wish you hadn't shown me that: yet another article that is way too long and confusing. Iskandar323 (talk) 12:09, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  “History” emphasizes the chronological variation, while other important variations that exist in sexual slavery in Islam are geographical and theological, and there are no reasons to emphasize the chronological dimension above the other two. Btw, not everyone seems happy with the title at History of slavery in the Muslim world. --Grufo (talk) 12:17, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  What I want the article to emphasise is what actually happened, i.e. the practice of sexual slavery. Lots of societies have nice value systems in their propaganda (e.g. communist regimes) but in practice routinely commit crimes against humanity. So let us focus on the reality of ruined lives, rather than nice-sounding theological statements. A "history of" title focusses on practice.-- Toddy1 (talk) 12:53, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose. History of slave concubinage in the Muslim world would be a better, more exact title. Surely an article on Female slavery and concubinage in the Muslim world also include female slavery that did not involve the master having sexual relations with the slave - for example if the slave were employed as a cook or a cleaner.-- Toddy1 (talk) 12:45, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  Comment. Good point about “female slavery”, I hadn't thought about it. One of the consequences of using “history” in the title will be that we will have to drop all the “interpretations” – as these are only theology, not concrete history. That means that if someone practiced “A”, but a Quranic commentator said that “A” is incorrect but with little impact on the history, we will have to omit that Quranic commentator. --Grufo (talk) 13:11, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  @Toddy1, you're right, but that is somewhat the point. In most historical circumstances, there was little distinction between a female slave used for domestic chores and one used for sex, and a master could change the way in which they used their slaves in a fluid way. This fluidity is the point that Bookku made under the talk header: Female slavery in Muslim world", when he suggested that title. It is also a matter of sourcing. Most sources talk about female slaves or concubines, and what their masters could or could not do or did or did not do to them. The sourcing does not support statements about "sexual slaves" (13 mentions in this article), it supports statements about the treatment of female slaves (40+ mentions) and concubines (100+ mentions). "Sexual slavery" is not the terminology of this article. Iskandar323 (talk) 13:35, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  I agree that slave concubinage is probably quite a good term, but the fact is that few sources use this terminology, so sadly it would ultimately an exercise in WP:SYNTH to try to construct or reconstitute an article along the lines of that terminology. We should use the terminology of the sources. Iskandar323 (talk) 13:39, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  I've suggested "female slavery AND concubinage" principally because there are two warring camps in this subject area: those that think concubinage or something related to concubinage is the only appropriate terminology, and others who think this is hopeless WP:EUPHEMISM for slavery when you could just say slavery. I've proposed a halfway house both because that seems like the option most likely to generate consensus, and because the sources also use both. Iskandar323 (talk) 13:43, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  Although any female slave could be used for sex, the Arabic word used, surriyya, does not translate as “any slave who happens to be a woman”, but translates as “a female slave whom one takes as a possession and for concubitus” (i.e., a sex slave) (@Wiqi55: this is definitely your territory). Furthermore, as long as what we use is backed by sources, we can choose in total freedom and we should not count what is used more often (it is ultimately an editorial choice). As I have said a zillion times, “sexual slavery” is broader, less specialized and more WP:COMMONNAME than “concubinage” (not just the odd “concubinage with slaves”, but “concubinage” in all its meanings). --Grufo (talk) 13:52, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  What is the difference between a concubine and a sex slave? M.Bitton (talk) 13:57, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  A sex slave is a sex slave in every context, a concubine is a sex slave only in Islam. --Grufo (talk) 13:58, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  Exactly, which makes the use of the term "concubinage" all the more relevant. M.Bitton (talk) 14:01, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  I don't follow. It makes the use of the term “concubinage” more specialized, not relevant. When we can avoid specialized terms that require context in favor of non-specialized terms that don't require context we should choose the latter. --Grufo (talk) 14:05, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  The context here is the Islam and your answer to my question proves that concubinage is what should be used. M.Bitton (talk) 14:07, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  You have strange ways of proving things. The context is Islam, but the knowledge that “concubinage” expresses a peculiar meaning in that context would become specialized knowledge that Misplaced Pages would require from its readers. You might want to have a look at WP:PAGEDECIDE and optionally read WP:SCOPE. --Grufo (talk) 14:17, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  I asked you a question and your answer says exactly what the subject is all about. There is nothing specialized about the term concubinage and this is not some children's encyclopedia where basic terms need to be avoided. M.Bitton (talk) 14:28, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  There is nothing specialized about the term concubinage A term that appears with a particular meaning only in one single context is among the most specialized things we can think of. --Grufo (talk) 14:45, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  Utter nonsense! If the term is good enough for other encyclopedias, then it's certainly is good enough for Misplaced Pages. M.Bitton (talk) 14:47, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  The term is definitely good for Misplaced Pages too. However it is not to be preferred for a page title, as there are better (less specialized) options. --Grufo (talk) 14:49, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  Says who? M.Bitton (talk) 14:52, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  WP:CRITERIA, WP:PRECISION, WP:PAGEDECIDE. --Grufo (talk) 15:01, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  Again, utter nonsense! WP:CRITERIA, WP:PRECISION apply to the term "concubinage". M.Bitton (talk) 15:04, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  My words will not become “utter nonsense” simply by you repeating it. This from WP:CRITERIA works with “sexual slavery” but does not work with “concubinage”:

  “Naturalness – The title is one that readers are likely to look or search for and that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles. Such a title usually conveys what the subject is actually called in English.”

  (Translation: If a reader is curious about sexual slavery in Islam it is very unlikely that they will search for concubinage in Islam)

  This is instead show how we should ignore the “popularity” of a term among reliable sources:

  “Natural disambiguation: Using an alternative name that the subject is also commonly called in English reliable sources, albeit not as commonly as the preferred-but-ambiguous title. Do not, however, use obscure or made-up names.”

  I could go on with quoting the guidelines, but I will stop here. It is your turn now to quote the guidelines to support the proposal of using “concubinage” for meaning “sexual slavery”. --Grufo (talk) 15:14, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  works with “sexual slavery” but does not work with “concubinage” That's a baseless assertion that will remain so until it' substantiated using RS. Until then, I'd say that what you quoted applies to concubinage and is what is practised by every tertiary source out there (see the examples given in the above discussion by Vice regent). M.Bitton (talk) 15:22, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  Now I can say “utter nonsense”! Look at all the disputes about the name of this page and count all the editors who actually did not know that Islamic “concubines” needed to be sex slaves. Now try to compare that to how many editors would not know that sex slaves needed to be… sex slaves. And we are talking about editors… imagine the readers! Na na, I can definitely say: “utter nonsense”! But if you really think that “concubinage” for meaning “sexual slavery” is an expression of naturalness, well… we can happily stop here. --Grufo (talk) 15:30, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  Your reply is pure baseless WP:OR, therefore, what I said above stands. M.Bitton (talk) 15:33, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  Ok, if we're talking reliable sources, "Natural disambiguation" definitely supports concubinage - if one of the terms were to be considered more obscure or made up in the context, it would be 'sexual slavery", which simply isn't a term that anyone routinely uses to refer to anything medieval. Iskandar323 (talk) 15:31, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  “Natural disambiguation” defines three categories: 1) alternative name used in few sources, 2) preferred-but-ambiguous name used in many sources, 3) made-up name never used in sources. Out of the three it invites to use the first one. --Grufo (talk) 15:39, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  WP:Criteria says:

  Article titles are based on how reliable English-language sources refer to the article's subject.

  which in this case would have to be concubinage. M.Bitton (talk) 15:48, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  All the options we are discussing here are backed by reliable sources. What we choose though does not depend on its popularity. --Grufo (talk) 15:52, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  Your previous cherry picked nonsense has been duly noted and ignored as such. M.Bitton (talk) 15:56, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  Please mind WP:CIVIL. --Grufo (talk) 17:19, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  Plenty of other cultures have practiced concubinage with slaves. For example, Abraham's concubine Hagar was a slave. See also Concubinage#Concubinage and slavery.VR _talk 14:14, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  Sure, but in all of them but Islam a concubine could also be a free woman, which means that everywhere but in Islam “concubine” cannot be considered a synonym of “sex slave”. --Grufo (talk) 14:17, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  Best stay away from tales of Ahraham as a frame of reference - didn't he also live to the age of 200 years? Iskandar323 (talk) 15:49, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

• Comment I would support History of concubinage in the Muslim world as "concubinage" is what is used by the scholarly sources. M.Bitton (talk) 13:41, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  So I agree that concubinage is broadly speaking more precise, but I also appreciate that a case can be made that A) the term concubine could be interpreted as a little bit of a WP:EUPHEMISM, particularly given the slightly gentrified modern usage of concubine to mean free-spirited courtesan or mistress, and that B) Islamic concubinage was a product of but not always identical to other forms of female slavery at any given time. Think Ottoman Harem versus slave prostitutes. Iskandar323 (talk) 15:22, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  Not only is concubinage more precise, it is exactly what is used in other tertiary sources. What those who have an axe to grind could interpret it as is irrelevant. M.Bitton (talk) 15:27, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  While I hear you, I would suggest that it's not quite so simple here, as while concubinage was the preferred academic terminology certainly right up until the end of the 20th century, a growing number of scholars in the 21st century abandon it in favour of the terminology of slavery, particularly those engaged involved in the study of Islam and gender, such as writers like Myrne Pernilla and Kecia Ali - female voices on the topic that ought to be heard. Iskandar323 (talk) 15:47, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  The tertiary sources haven't abandoned it. Concubinage in Islam has a specific meaning that hasn't changed, and while the fringe theories can be cited as examples (some concubines became queens), they in themselves do not represent primary topic or how it's covered in the overwhelming majority of RS. M.Bitton (talk) 15:56, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  @Iskandar323: the term concubine appears 25 times in Pernilla Myrne's work (including 15 instances of "slave concubine"), and concubine appears 181 times in Kecia Ali's Marriage and slavery in early Islam.VR _talk 16:07, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  Oh ... have they been grossly mis-paraphrased in the article then, or do they use the terms interchangeably? Iskandar323 (talk) 16:16, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  If enough people swing behind History of concubinage in the Muslim world, I can totally roll with that. Iskandar323 (talk) 16:18, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  @Toddy1 How would you be with History of concubinage in the Muslim world, minus the "slave" - I personally see slave concubine as a bit tautologous given that slavery as a concept is largely (though not entirely) self-contained in the Islamic concubinage concept. I've also realised that there is a rather better term to be found for any "free concubines" in the term "courtesan", as per this source: Iskandar323 (talk) 16:24, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  In 20th Century English, a "courtesan" is a woman who sells her favours, i.e. a paid girlfriend, who may have more than one man who is paying her. It can be used to describe a girlfriend/mistress who is financially supported by her man. It is also used as a euphemism for a prostitute.-- Toddy1 (talk) 03:46, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

  The book Concubines and Courtesans: Women and Slavery in Islamic History by Matthew S. Gordon and Kathryn A. Hain is probably using the word "courtesan" in an older sense - a woman of the court, to mean female entertainers (though I have not read the book).-- Toddy1 (talk) 08:26, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

  Yes, I presumed so, as I also have not read the book. It was just the first book I had seen that used both of those terms in the title. I assume that it is probably referring to Qiyan, female slaves that were artistically trained as entertainers. In hindsight I realise that the distinction here is probably not between free and not free, but between female slaves used for sex and entertainment. Iskandar323 (talk) 08:46, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

  You guys really like re-inventing meanings. A courtesan is a woman of a royal or noble court, or a lover of a noble man. As of course this cannot apply straightly to the book's context, it is used there for an exceptionally high status sex slave, almost half unfree, half free. From the book review that Kecia Ali made (p. 255, emphasis mine):

  Some, as I have tended to do in the past, use “slaves” and others, as I try to do now, make a point of using “enslaved person.” The latter phrase highlights that enslavement is not a natural state but something that is actively done to one human being by another, who is not simply a “master” or “mistress” but a “slaveowner.” English terms such as concubine and courtesan (or borrowed terms such as geisha) connote varying levels of status and agency; Nielson argues that “the ambiguity” attending prestigious, highly trained qiyān carved out “a liminal social and legal space between free and unfree” which makes courtesan a more accurate term than ones conveying “concubinage or servitude alone”. Reynolds, while noting “myriad” divergences, suggests that “the geisha of Japan are perhaps the most comparable form of socially institutionalized female companionship and entertainment for male patrons”.

  --Grufo (talk) 10:36, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

  Maybe we're not guys, but anyway, seems like that quote confirms what we were saying. Iskandar323 (talk) 10:44, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

  Arguing, arguing, arguing… Pronouncing a “thank you” from time to time will not kill you. If I hadn't read this sentence of yours I wouldn't have bothered intervening: In hindsight I realise that the distinction here is probably not between free and not free, but between female slaves used for sex and entertainment. --Grufo (talk) 10:53, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

  @Vice regent: How on earth did you do that search? - I can't even find searchable google books for these. Iskandar323 (talk) 16:59, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  @Vice regent: I get only 28 occurrences of “concubine” in Kecia Ali (and they are most of the time mixed with “sex”, “sexual”, etc.). --Grufo (talk) 17:07, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  @Grufo: When I click that link I see "Showing 48 results in this book for concubine," so it is not consistent. But that only counts the number of pages that reference the term, whereas I looked at every single usage of the term (a single page can have more than one usage of the term). I also included search results for "concubines" and "concubinage" into "concubine" - sorry for the lack of clarity.VR _talk 17:11, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  I mean, whatever way you look at it, the book uses the term A LOT. Iskandar323 (talk) 17:36, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  @Iskandar323: You should look at the last number I posted, in which “sexual slavery” wins over looks better than before compared to “concubinage”. But this is anyway the wrong way to look at the problem. Even if one of the two were way way less represented than it is, we would still make our own independent editorial choice based on several factors, including clarity and ambiguity. --Grufo (talk) 17:52, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  Your last numbers were wrong and after you corrected them, you have a result that says the exact opposite. The editorial judgement should be based on tertiary sources (those that establish DUE). M.Bitton (talk) 18:17, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

• Google scholar results for usage of "concubine" vs "sexual slavery" were provided by Toddy1(table1,table2,table4) and Grufo(table3). Every table shows "concubine" being most commonly used by reliable sources. VR _talk 20:35, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
• Support the move, though History of concubinage in the Muslim world is probably preferable. We could also go for "Islamicate world" too as recent sources have moved towards using that term, but "Muslim world" is perhaps more clear and used in many sources. Jushyosaha604 (talk) 02:32, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
• A suitable title would be Sexual slavery in the Islamic world or alternatively Sexual slavery in the Muslim world. Mcphurphy (talk) 21:24, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
• The change from "in Islam" to "in the Muslim world" seems like a change of scope. What is the justification? Srnec (talk) 00:01, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

  @Srnec: Indeed. --Grufo (talk) 12:45, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

  @Srnec: this is for WP:CONSISTENCY; for example slavery is divided into Islamic views on slavery (theology and law) and History of slavery in the Muslim world (actual historic practice). We already have Islamic views on concubinage so the counterpart would be History of concubinage in the Muslim world. The reasons for the split in both cases (slavery and concubinage) are WP:SIZESPLIT (because the material is too big) and because what Islam preached and what Muslims practiced are often quite different.VR _talk 13:36, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

  When you split on the basis of WP:SIZESPLIT you split different topics. This page and your POVFORK talk about the same thing, which is why the editor who closed the renaming dispute at your POV-fork (Spekkios) said the exact opposite of what you are saying: “There does appear to be some basis for a discussion on merging articles”. --Grufo (talk) 18:02, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

• Well, fine. History of (slave-)concubinage in the Muslim world is fine by me. There are limits to how long discussions can drag on.Nishidani (talk) 17:13, 16 November 2021 (UTC) Original comment copied here based on this message by @Nishidani:.VR _talk 14:00, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose. This is a good topic with many relevant references. It should be a non-POV overview of the several ways that sexual slavery exists and has existed in an Islamic setting. There is room for several other articles on more specific topics, such as what constitutes concubinage and whether or not it constitutes or overlaps slavery... and even more sensitive topics. This will always be a struggle, and offensive to some, but Misplaced Pages is not censored and so eliminating the topic from Misplaced Pages is not justified. Andrewa (talk) 23:40, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

  @Andrewa: Hi, I'd just like to point out that no one is trying to substantially alter the scope of this topic, but instead, better align the current title of the article with the terminology used in the reliable sources that it references - there are many discussions about this on the talk page, both above and below this move request, that seek to address this. Sexual slavery is a modern term that is only used widely in connection with articles about Isis specifically, and this usage is already covered extensively in more specific articles such as Sexual violence in the Iraqi insurgency, Genocide of Yazidis by the Islamic State and Slavery in 21st-century jihadism. Iskandar323 (talk) 06:13, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

  That is not the way it appears to me. If sources say that sexual slavery has not occurred in Islam up until recently, then the article should say that. But they don't. There is a lot going on... the practices that would today be regarded as sexual slavery were once common to most if not all societies. But the particular interest in and notability of sexual slavery in Islam is that there is still significant practice of it in modern times, and worse, that this is claimed to be part of the tradition and even essence of Islam by those who continue the practice. Again, if this is rejected by most Islamic authorities today (as I think is the case and that sources do indicate), then the article should say that. Andrewa (talk) 07:29, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

  Depending on the exact definition of "sexual slavery", it can cover the topic of this article (which most RS call "concubinage", see this), along with forced marriage (), child marriage (), bacha bazi (), forced prostitution etc. WP:Precise requires we use the most specific term for article title, not an umbrella term.VR _talk 14:17, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

  We do not go by any person's exact definition but by the common meaning of the term, and yes it does include most if not all of those other more specific topics. Concubinage may be a synonym for sexual slavery in some contexts, and yes it has been strongly argued that this is one such context, but whether or not that is the case (I am still a bit sceptical) it is not recognisable as that by many English readers. Andrewa (talk) 23:05, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

  I'd just like to point out that no one is trying to substantially alter the scope of this topic: Leaving intentions aside, the proposed renaming will substantially change the scope of the article. All religious views on sexual slavery will become out of scope. --Grufo (talk) 15:57, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

  This table shows that the sources used in this article prefer the term "concubinage" over "sexual slavery".VR _talk 14:17, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

  And here we go again repeating ourselves… We don't choose a title based on its popularity. WP:QUALIFIER defines three categories: 1) alternative name used in few sources, 2) preferred-but-ambiguous name used in many sources, 3) made-up name never used in sources. Out of the three it invites to use the first one.

  “Natural disambiguation: Using an alternative name that the subject is also commonly called in English reliable sources, albeit not as commonly as the preferred-but-ambiguous title. Do not, however, use obscure or made-up names.”

  The usage of “concubinage” and “sexual slavery” in the sources amounts to the same order of magnitude, and probably some corrections will be necessary too, as sources that use slavery-related titles might still use “concubine” in the body and be counted for both, although they would need to be counted only for “sexual slavery” – as “concubine” would not constitute WP:QUALIFIER. I believe will not be necessary to explain in this comment also why using “sexual slavery” is less ambiguous than using “concubinage” for meaning “sexual slavery”. --Grufo (talk) 15:51, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

  @Andrewa: Can I ask two clarifying questions please:

  Do you object to the article title starting "History of..."?

  Do you object to the article title saying "in the Muslim world" instead of "in Islam"?

  -- Toddy1 (talk) 15:37, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

  I oppose both.

  I can understand sexual slavery, and particularly the current practice of it, being an uncomfortable topic for Muslims, but it is one of great interest to many. We should not descope the article to restrict it to historical practice.

  And I see no advantage in talking of the Muslim world here rather than Islam. In practice those two titles have much the same scope, but with different emphasis. That proposed change would shift the emphasis to the practice. The current title puts the emphasis on the basis or claimed basis for the practice. Both are relevant, each to the other. We could even perhaps justify two articles, but I doubt a split is necessary. So I would stick with the more concise title, which may even have a slightly wider scope. Andrewa (talk) 22:55, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

  The reason for "Muslim world" is to include concubinage practices that occurred in the Muslim world, but had no roots in Islam. (This book covers several such examples) It also due to WP:CONSISTENCY with History of slavery in the Muslim world, Timeline of science and engineering in the Muslim world, Female labor force in the Muslim world, Science in the medieval Islamic world, Medicine in the medieval Islamic world etc. Note how we have "Medicine in the medieval Islamic world" as opposed to just "Medicine in the Islamic world", even though there's still medicine in the Islamic world today. This is because medieval Islamic medicine is unique enough to be a topic. Likewise historical concubinage is a unique topic that has been covered by many RS (and many more).VR _talk 23:51, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

  The reason for "Muslim world" is to include concubinage practices that occurred in the Muslim world, but had no roots in Islam. So, as I thought, you are proposing a change of scope, not a renaming. A renaming is done to better reflect the scope, not to change a scope without a consensus. It is actually a big change of scope what you are requesting – basically another article. You and Iskandar323 should definitely find an agreement. --Grufo (talk) 03:38, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

  What VR refers to is the fact that many of these current "in Islam" example practices were a complex product of both religious precedent and other social and cultural pressures within muslim civilizations. Take for example Ottoman practice, where a concubine could become a wife, when theologically it is quite clearly outlined that a concubine could not juts "become a wife". And then of course we have the Sunni-Shia schism and all manner of other denominational splits and cult formations - meaning that in any one time and place, what one person may claim is Islamic practice might be another's heresy. Iskandar323 (talk) 04:29, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

  @Andrewa: If you look at the article, you will find that it already emphasizes practice. Part of the reason for the change is that "in Islam" somewhat implies a theological approach, whereas this article is largely a compilation of historical and geographical examples of practice. In any case, the split you mention has already occurred. Islamic views on concubinage is its own article now (discussing the "claimed basis for the practice"), and Islamic views on slavery has existed as an article for an age. Iskandar323 (talk) 04:18, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

• oppose the wording in Muslim world, support a title with wording in Islam. —usernamekiran • sign the guestbook • (talk) 14:43, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
• Comment: Expecting reasonable effort towards at least reasonable participation of Women users in women related discussions and not to hurry up discussion closures til then.

• • Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women
  • Demand women's participation in decision-making at all levels
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Thanks Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 16:41, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

This discussion is about terminology and sourcing, and this articles cites numerous eminent academics and scholars who are women, many of them specialised in gender studies or even more specifically gender studies with respect to Islam. A discussion of the sources is inclusive of these voices. Iskandar323 (talk) 17:09, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

• Support: I think the discussions at the Google scholar results section is itself explaining why the current title, containing "sexual slavery", is not suitable and a move should occur. The statistics show "concubine" is used far more than "sexual slavery" by the reliable sources. Also, I have previously explained my thoughts here and here. Among the numerous sources supporting the move, I would give more weights to sources like highly credible Encyclopaedia of the Quran and Encyclopaedia of Islam both by BRILL and The Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Women. Finally, I think History of concubinage in the Muslim world is a good suggestion, given the exchanged comments in this discussion. --Mhhossein 19:28, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
  • That discussion did not establish that concubinage and sexual slavery are synonyms, and they clearly are not. And even if they were, there would still be the question of recognisability. Andrewa (talk) 02:00, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

    You will not find them used in a manner like synonyms, because the two terms are not used interchangeably in the same works. You have books talking about "concubinage" and the use of "female slaves", which included as dancers and entertainers, but not solely as "sex slaves", because that wasn't really a concept. "Sexual slavery" itself is a very distinct post-1970s to 21st-century term, that is applies largely to events moving forward (for example, Isis-related sexual violence) in a world after abolition and slavery conventions. However, if you look back at, for example, Ottoman history, the use of female slaves, for among other things, sex, was embedded in a global landscape of slavery. Iskandar323 (talk) 04:54, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

    • Btw, Iskandar323, Concubines and Courtesans refers to qiyan as "musical concubines".VR _talk 04:59, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

      Yes, they seem to fit into a sort of societal niche not unlike Geisha - it's interesting. Iskandar323 (talk) 05:45, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Google scholar results for Islam and sexual slavery and/or concubine

-- Toddy1 (talk) 16:01, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Nice analysis - wise to do it with and without the Islamic State: very revealing as to how big a share of the usage that accounts for. Iskandar323 (talk) 16:06, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Ditto. The terrorist group ISIS does not represent all of Islam, but because it has "Islam" in its name, results can be misleading.VR _talk 16:07, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

I don't have the energy to add another box, but I would note that "Islam" and "female slaves" also generates about 10,000 hits, retaining 7,000 of them when excluding "Islamic state" - so also a major term, and certainly more so than "sexual slavery". I could certainly be persuaded that it should be "Concubinage and female slavery" rather than the reverse though, given the almost 2:1 ratio of sources weighing in on behalf of concubines and concubinage. That was my first hunch actually. Iskandar323 (talk) 16:13, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the contribution. We all agree that historically, especially in periods where “sexual slave” could not even exist as a term, “concubine” was the word most often used in the English language to refer to an Islamic sex slave (but you should also take into account this comment from Iskandar323 about recent research trends). However in the choice of a title considerations about popularity vs. ambiguity can play a decisive role (see previous section). --Grufo (talk) 16:17, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Please see Vice regent's reply to Iskander's comment. M.Bitton (talk) 16:24, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

I had seen it, as I had also looked at those sources before this discussion even started. What should I see in that comment? --Grufo (talk) 16:31, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

My comment wasn't meant for you, so don't touch it again. M.Bitton (talk) 16:35, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

I apologize. I understood it as such, as I am the only one who mentioned Iskandar323's comment. Out of curiosity, for whom was it meant? --Grufo (talk) 16:37, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

-- Toddy1 (talk) 17:43, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

If we remove also “ISIS” (not just “Islamic State”), a few articles will go away too from “sexual slavery” (3,200 hits for “sexual slavery”). But if we do the same with “concubine” and “concubinage”, the hits will drop drastically (6,020 hits for “concubinage” and 10,200 for “concubine” – for the last two I set the language to English, as these words appear also in other languages):

search terms	excluding "Islamic state" and "ISIS"
"Islam" and "sexual slavery"	3,200 hits
"Islam" and "concubinage"	6,020 hits
"Islam" and "concubine"	10,200 hits

--Grufo (talk) 17:47, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

EDIT I have corrected an error due to using the apostrophe instead of the double quotes. --Grufo (talk) 18:03, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

I'd be careful with the acronym "Isis": there is always a risk there that you are sweeping up references to the ancient Egyptian goddess Isis, who was incidentally a concubine of Thutmose II - there is a not non-existent risk that such mythology may be mentioned in Middle Eastern histories. Iskandar323 (talk) 17:54, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

If that were the case, the goddess would be removed equally from all three results. --Grufo (talk) 19:09, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

• As predicted, this is just another circle in the making. That's why I mentioned the fact that all tertiary sources (that's what we used to establish DUE) use the term concubine. M.Bitton (talk) 17:51, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  Not really a circle - even in the most pessimistic reading, we have 4,000-6,500 hits for concubines/concubinage versus 3,200 for sexual slavery - and that's assuming that the Goddess Isis definitely isn't messing us about. Iskandar323 (talk) 17:57, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  I know, but everytime you leave a small window, someone will somehow manage to turn the exit into a circle (this has plagued this article's discussions from the start), that's why I insist on using the tertiary sources. M.Bitton (talk) 18:17, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  @M.Bitton: By tertiary sources do you mean only encyclopedic definitions? Iskandar323 (talk) 18:33, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

  @Iskandar323: By tertiary sources, I mean other encyclopedias (see the ones mentioned by Vice regent). M.Bitton (talk) 18:35, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

@Grufo: In your some of search terms you did -'islamic state' instead of -"Islamic state" This makes a lot of difference:

search terms	excluding "Islamic state" and "ISIS"
	q=	lr=lang_en&q=
"Islam" and "sexual slavery"	3,200 hits	3,070 hits
"Islam" and "concubinage"	8,210 hits	6,020 hits
"Islam" and "concubine"	13,000 hits	10,200 hits

I think what you do when you use -'islamic state' in the search is to change the search such that it must include the word "state'" but exclude the word "'islamic".-- Toddy1 (talk) 17:57, 10 November 2021 (UTC) modified to show the effect of the language modifier, which Grufo is now using, but did not originally use.-- Toddy1 (talk) 18:45, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

@Toddy1: I had made a mistake with the double quotes. Should be fixed now. Addition You should set the search language to English as I did above, as “concubine” is used both in French and Italian. --Grufo (talk) 18:04, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Searches for Islam without the word Islamic certainly would cause some problems ... Iskandar323 (talk) 17:59, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

If you quote “Islamic State”, as I did, it will find “Islamic WHATEVER” but it will exclude “Islamic State”. --Grufo (talk) 18:05, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

In addition to the table I posted, we should consider all possible periphrases for “sexual slavery” (such as “sex slaves”, “slaves for pleasure”, etc.), while “concubine” / “concubinage” have no periphrasis. --Grufo (talk) 18:31, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Depending on context, terms like harem girls and courtesan could be analogous, without of course forgetting the Arabic "surriyya". Iskandar323 (talk) 18:37, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

“Harem girls” is very far from concubinage. “Courtesans” is closer – but is it used with the same meaning of “slave concubine”? --Grufo (talk) 18:40, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Grufo, you need to stop thinking about Roman law. Harem girls is basically the academic definition of concubinage. Iskandar323 (talk) 18:47, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

…Or… of sexual slavery. I honestly was not thinking about the meaning of concubinage. “Harem girls” simply points to the girls who lived in harems. Whether you want to call that concubinage or sexual slavery it is definitely not “harem girls” that will tell. --Grufo (talk) 18:55, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

I would also note, however, that while sex slaves is certainly a periphrasis of the same dubious applied modern term, "slaves for pleasure", while no doubt a sexual euphemism, is not explicitly so. Slaves for pleasure could conceivably include dancers, musicians, et cetera - in other words slaves with all sorts of potential talents, in much the same way as many courtesans (or Geisha in Japan) were multi-talented. Sex slave, by comparison, is a reductive and objectifying term. Iskandar323 (talk) 18:46, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

It is impossible to give en exact estimate of the numbers. However we are talking about the same order of magnitude. I also believe that “sexual slavery” was an almost impossible term to find in literature (in any field) before the first decades of the 20th century – the modern meaning of “sexual” is… pretty modern. --Grufo (talk) 18:52, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Or maybe it's because it is a bit redundant. Where you have slaves you have sex. Show me a slave culture without sex. Iskandar323 (talk) 18:55, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

I also believe that is true. The anomaly here is not the sex with slaves, the anomaly is the fact that the only sex allowed outside marriage was with slaves (thus, the only possible “concubinage” was with slaves). This anomaly is so unique that it does not allow to define sexual slavery using the stand-alone “concubinage”, as the latter defaults to something else. --Grufo (talk) 19:00, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

• There already is an article about Islamic views on concubinage. I think anything about concubinage should be going to that article, and any thing about sexual slavery should stay in this article. There is already an article about History of sexual slavery in the United States so I think something similar could be the scope in this article. Iraniangal777 (talk) 06:47, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

  There's also Female slavery in the United States, but in any case it is an imperfect analogy, because there were essentially no laws of institutions governing the rights or treatment of slaves in the US - they were essentially treated as pure objects or sub-humans, in contrast to the centuries of legal, religious and societal frameworks around concubinage in the Muslim world, which were well developed and sometimes quite elaborate and multi-layered, such as under the Ottomans. Iskandar323 (talk) 06:58, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

  There already is an article about Islamic views on concubinage. I think anything about concubinage should be going to that article, and any thing about sexual slavery should stay in this article. They are the same thing in the Islamic context. --Grufo (talk) 12:04, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

  Not really. If these two article were together, I would be calling for a WP:SPLIT - Islamic views on concubinage is 40,000kB, and Sexual slavery in Islam is currently 130,000kB and really needs further splitting - it's entirely practical to cover theology properly in one coherent article and cover history in another, with a small section on theology linking to the main article. I frequently look around Misplaced Pages and wonder if people have just forgotten all about WP:SPLIT. Iskandar323 (talk) 12:08, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

A little addition to show that there is not really a chronological differentiation in the usage of the words concubinage and sexual slavery, and our choice is purely an editorial choice:

--Grufo (talk) 12:09, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

of your search results, about 1,200 hits were articles about ancient Egypt that mention the goddess Isis and the word concubine.-- Toddy1 (talk) 12:24, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

I would lower your numbers if I were you:

search terms	hits	hits with lr=lang_en
islamic state AND concubine	2,690 hits	2,590 hits

Don't ask me how that is possible. Ask Google Scholar. --Grufo (talk) 12:29, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

Hahaha, wow Toddy1, higher than I could have imagined! I was half being tongue-in-cheek, but clearly the confusion is real! Iskandar323 (talk) 12:32, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

There is no goddess here. --Grufo (talk) 12:39, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

More broadly Grufo, Isis went out of their way to frame their warped thinking in historical terms, so this is hardly a surprise. But the only people calling what Isis did "concubinage" are Isis themselves and those parroting what Isis said. It was plain and simple rape, sex abuse and modern sex trafficking. Iskandar323 (talk) 12:36, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

I agree that the press that uses “concubinage” with ISIS is parroting them, as I also think choosing “concubinage” on Misplaced Pages for a page title about sexual slavery is parroting an apologetic view. For an average reader sexual slavery is not called concubinage. --Grufo (talk) 12:39, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

For an average reader of history, concubinage is not sexual slavery - that is extremely reductive. Concubines weren't just slaves for sex, they were secondary wives wielding often considerable power and influence: individuals operating in a restrictive legal framework, yes, but not just sex objects. Iskandar323 (talk) 12:58, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

Whether they were secondary wives or sexual objects really depends on a lot of factors (epoch, region, status, etc.) – and something similar happened in ancient Rome, where many slaves were almost spouses (mostly husbands in that case, as contubernium was more prevalent between a free woman and a slave man). But a shared element of all the possibilities we are examining here was the fact of being private property. A reader does not expect that in “concubinage”, but does expect that in “sexual slavery”. --Grufo (talk) 13:04, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

It's unwise to cite wiki articles as authoritative, esp. stubs like that on contubernium, which generalizes what was a very specific custom for a while in imperial households as though it were characteristic of Roman society.Nishidani (talk) 13:44, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

I would be cautious with poisoning the well if were you. I wrote that contubernium article (which is not a stub) and read the sources I used. The most important source – Treggiari, Susan (1981). "Contubernales". Phoenix. 35 (1). CAC: 42–69. doi:10.2307/1087137. JSTOR 1087137. – is quite impressive. The 260 contubernia analyzed come all from the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, which means not from literature (which is often unbalanced in favor of the elite), but from inscriptions made by common citizens (“It is my purpose here to discuss only those who are actually described as contubernales in the inscriptions of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum”, p. 44). --Grufo (talk) 14:18, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

This is splitting hairs. Even if it's not a stub, it's still start class and overly reliant on the Treggiari source. Iskandar323 (talk) 14:27, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

The Contubernium article relies on several sources, but the topic is not the most discussed topic. Most sources analyze Roman laws or at most anecdotes found in literature, while Treggiari is the only one I found that made the dirty job of reading inscriptions. It is also the most cited article specifically on the subject. --Grufo (talk) 14:37, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

As Bitton notes, you do expect that in Islam. However, the distinction you are making is also artificial. Concubinage typically involved slaves in ancient Mesopotamia, Assria, and often in Greece, China and Korea. They were also essentially a husband's property in Mongol society. Iskandar323 (talk) 13:20, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

And we go back to what I was saying earlier. If you need to “expect” something, it means that that the reader needs to contextualize. You can do that in an article body, but if you can you should avoid that in a page title, where you have no context. In an encyclopedia I expect that two pages named “Christian views on concubinage” (not existing) and “Islamic views on concubinage” talk about the same thing; but they can't, as in Christianity the actual meaning of concubinage is preserved. Misplaced Pages favors broader scopes that do not need context. --Grufo (talk) 13:36, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

Any usage of Islamic terminology by Isis should be considered a non-mainstream (WP:FRINGE) take from the outset. Iskandar323 (talk) 12:51, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

We are not talking about the usage by ISIS here, we are talking about the articles that appear on Google Scholar. --Grufo (talk) 12:54, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

• A Google Scholar search for "Sexual Slavery in Islam" returns 77,200 results . A Google Scholar search for "Concubinage in Islam" only returns 11,000 results. Mcphurphy (talk) 21:29, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

  You need to put each word or phrase that you want to reference in a search within quotation marks, so, in this case, "Sexual slavery" in "Islam", which gets you 4,600 results - otherwise you're just gathering every source that has the word "sexual" and the word "slavery" in it at some point. Iskandar323 (talk) 21:47, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

I am going to request editors who have previously partaken in discussions on this article to comment. @Dr Silverstein:, Error in Template:Reply to: Input contains forbidden characters., @Bolanigak:. Mcphurphy (talk) 23:52, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

@Mcphurphy: You should check the template syntax of your pings. --Grufo (talk) 13:00, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

What is lacking

at the outset is a clear definition of terms. Concepts have a categorical order, and subsets. (a) Slavery→ (b)slavery in antiquity-(c)female slavery→(d)female slavery in Islam→(e)enslavement of women for sexual purposes in Islam.

This article ignores such encyclopedic order, and just runs in medias res the reduction of a complex sociological phenomenon of concubinage to sexual use. In antiquity - one can see it as early as Bk 1 of the Iliad, where Agamemnon offends the seer who wishes to redeem by ransom his daughter, enslaved by the king, by refusing the offer, stating that her stature and figure (sex) are more pleasing to him than his wife's, that she is clever (intelligent) and skillful at work. Three factors, and you find this all over ancient literature, the Islamic kind as well. Sexual availability certainly was important, but an enslaved woman was viewed also in other terms, and not just, as the modern use of the term 'sexual slavery' implies, exclusively as a source of physical self-gratification.

Among the many things to fix would be an introductory outline of the various key terms in Arabic denoting slaves in their functional roles, and their nuances: words like fatayāt etc. One requires this to avoid retrospective contamination of the history by the ineludible modern resonances of the terms we use. Once that is done, logical order would require that the legal definitions, in the Qur'an, and the sharia, for each condition be outlined.Nishidani (talk) 14:49, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

It is truly a continuous moving the goalposts for who criticizes this article… Just a short comment on what you write. Giving a darker connotation to slavery when applied to modernity is done automatically by the reader, but we don't change the way we define slavery. Think that the word used in Latin for slaves was “servus”. The word was used both for free servants and slaves, because freedom was not the big deal it is today back then (today the idea of a slave would be scandal). Do we call Roman slaves “servants” because of that? Answer: No – we use the same scandalous term that we use today for modern dehumanized slaves. --Grufo (talk) 15:18, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

Yes and no. There is the distinct term "Modern slavery" for more recent enslavement that is distinct precisely because its connotations are quite different from those of antiquarian and medieval slavery. Sexual slavery is a particularly bad term because it is explicitly modern and conveys a sense of meaning that is so overly simplistic that it does little justice to historic scenarios. Iskandar323 (talk) 15:43, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

Your are basically debunking yourself: the page you cite (Modern slavery) is a redirect to Slavery in the 21st century (there has even been an unsuccessful move request). --Grufo (talk) 15:58, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

Modern slavery is still a main term on that page: the title is less important. Again, you're somewhat missing the point, which is that people today already confuse modern forms of slavery, such as trafficking, forced labour and child abuse, with the legalised and normalised slave institutions of the past and view them through the framework of their modern understanding and cultural sensitivities. And it gets yet worse when you use thoroughly modern and reductive terms like "sexual slavery" to describe the far more complex societal institutions of the past. Iskandar323 (talk) 16:40, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

The title is most of what we are discussing so far. Let's analyze the risks:

1. “Sexual slavery in Islam”: readers risk to think that it was more inhumane than it was
2. “Concubinage in Islam”: readers risk to think that there was no slavery at all involved (we saw that happening even with editors during the previous dispute)

As often it was inhumane and there was a huge human traffic in antiquity, I would say that we can tolerate risk #1 more than risk #2. For sure we cannot describe exactly what it was in a page title, but #1 is way more accurate than #2. Any proposed renaming should always keep in mind this sentence from Slavery in the 21st century's unsuccessful move request: “A disambiguation that introduces another ambiguity is a failure”. --Grufo (talk) 16:52, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

I certainly agree that if consensus on Misplaced Pages meant saying the same things over and over until other people get bored and wander off, you'd have a winning strategy. Iskandar323 (talk) 17:07, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

Grufo. I mentioned concrete things: like an appropriate description at the outset of Islamic classifications of female slaves. You ignore that, for one, and just talk back in protest about goalposts being shifted. You appear to be happy with the set of goalposts so wide any blind, one-legged rookie could score even with their back to them. You are not helping the process of collegial revision here.Nishidani (talk) 21:24, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

No, I don't ignore that, and I appreciate all possible improvements. But if you really want to enhance the collegial work you should go slow. People don't look at Misplaced Pages every second, and already the current discussions are many. Nobody hunts us. In the meanwhile, if you really think you have good proposals you can already add them directly to the article. I would like though that when we edit this article we are always able to write in a way that both who loves Islam and who hates all religions feels equally satisfied for the quality of the information. I know that many current editors involved are Muslim, while personally I am atheist/agnostic (I don't really spend much time in defining my beliefs). It would be nice if people from other religions were involved too. At the moment I would say that many of the motivations in editing this article come from WP:IDONTLIKEIT. When I contribute to Misplaced Pages I am usually amazed by what I discover in the process. The other way around (making Misplaced Pages discover my beliefs) is inherently more boring. --Grufo (talk) 01:36, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Archiving

​​​​​​​​​​​The current archiving arrangements are that level-2 sections are archived if the most recent post is 90 days old. The archiving instructions are that a minimum of five level-2 sections should be left on the page.

The talk page has become enormous, so I propose to change the archiving instructions to 28 days, and a minimum of three level-2 sections should be left on the page. Does anyone object?-- Toddy1 (talk) 21:41, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

I'd say have at it! Be Bold! It can always be changed back at a later date. But while you're here, thoughts: ? Iskandar323 (talk) 21:53, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

It's okay for me too. But I would wait that the naming dispute ends first, or we will have to repeat things to the newcomers (if any) – and we already repeat ourselves too often. --Grufo (talk) 01:21, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

:IMHO you are underestimating our present discussion teams capacities to repeat same old discussion with incremental effect. :) If we are going to just empty talk page by archiving it and same people discussing same thing over and over (with kinda CopyPaste in incremental propo) then 28 days is too big, I foresee, you shall need to reduce the time frame further and further with much faster pace.:))

Seriously speaking: IMHO presently discussing people, 'truly', need to take break and leave present discussion open for 180 days as is for new readers to read take their own time and reflect in due course. Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 03:18, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Forced conversion

The section on "Forced conversion for concubinage" violates NPOV in two ways. The first is that it is sourced to a single author who argues Muslims accepted forced conversions. Yet in contrast there are many other reliable sources that say Islam prohibited forced conversion. This is based on the Quranic verse Al-Baqara 256 "There is no compulsion in religion." Many secondary sources interpret this to mean prohibition against forced conversion. The second is that it gives undue weight to the debate of forced conversion which is not directly related to this topic ((WP:COATRACK). For example, multiple book length treatments of this topic manage to cover all of it without even mentioning anything about conversion.VR _talk 23:10, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

• Comment: The section meets WP:NPOV, notwithstanding WP:IDONTLIKEIT as its reliably sourced. The secondary sources you show about the interpretation of that specific verse do not deal specifically with the issue of forcing slaves to convert. They are generalist, not absolutist so don't cover everything. As we know slaves don't enjoy the same freedoms and choices which free people are entitled to in Islam. Secondly, it is due because there are different Islamic scholarly opinions on whether its permissible for a Muslim man to have sexual relations with a pagan or Zoroastrian slave-girl. So most Islamic scholars permit forced conversions of these women to enable the sexual relations. Mcphurphy (talk) 23:48, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

  Did you read the sources? They specifically refer to prisoners, slaves etc. Do you have any sources that say that Quran 2:256 didn't apply to slaves? Finally, you didn't respond to my assertion that pretty much no sources that are on the topic of concubinage mention this debate. So it is undue to give it a section here.VR _talk 23:54, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

  Of course I read the sources. Only one of them (an unreliable encyclopedia whose author hasn't even researched the matter in detail) claims that the verse applies to prisoners of war. None of your other sources make the claim you are attributing to them. On the other hand, here are multiple sources dealing with forced conversions of slaves and concubines in Islam and the Muslim world. There's plenty more where that comes from. And the source we already have in the article deals with the various interpretations of 2:256 in detail. Do spare some time in reading it. Mcphurphy (talk) 00:12, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

  None of your links above have page numbers, making it impossible to verify them. This link looks unreliable. On the other hand each of the books I presented was reliable. Which of my sources is not reliable? All sources say that Quran 2:256 prohibits forced conversion. Which one do you think doesn't say that? VR _talk 00:17, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

  Then go to a library and read the books. Meanwhile, you have not shown why your references which discuss the issue of forced conversions in passing (and only 1 of which was to do with forced conversions of prisoners of war/slaves specifically) should be given priority over a detailed scholarly analysis by Yohanan Friedmann on the topic of forced conversions of slaves? Not all sources are equal. Treating your passing references to an accomplished work by Yohanan Friedmann is WP:UNDUE. Mcphurphy (talk) 01:22, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

  In addition to the 5 sources I gave above, all of whom write that Quran forbids forced conversion, there is also the book Conversion to Islam in the Premodern Age: A Sourcebook that says on pg 42 "Accordingly, the Qur'an rejects conversion by force." As the title suggests, the entire book is dedicated to the topic of conversion (meaning its not discussing it "in passing"). It is published by University of California Press. That particular chapter was written by Abdullah Saeed (professor), a professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Melbourne and its editors are also professors. Hope that is scholarly enough for you.VR _talk 03:13, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

This section is a bit undue for a couple of reasons - for one thing, it is a marginable issue in the grand scheme of concubinage, and the issue of whether Zoroastrians were people of the book or pagans (I believe it was ultimately decided that they were people of the book, and therefore dhimmis), was a time-limited one and more generally not particularly useful of an indicator of wider practice, given that it is Iran- and religious group-specific. As a non-core issue, it would be better placed on a page about Islamic views on the subject or about the Islamic conquest/governance of Iran. The other material appears conflicted/inconclusive, so hardly the stuff of issuing-defining solidity. Short of further sources/examples, it is hard to justify keeping this as its own section. The remaining early Islam conflict material would readily fit in another section. Iskandar323 (talk) 06:16, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

I've spent the past day reading all these arguments. Frankly, the objections to retaining this section make absolutely zero sense. We have quite a detailed study from Friedmann discussing this. He is one of the foremost experts on Islam, Islamic theology and conversion to Islam. His source outweighs all the weak counter-sourced being presented.

Everyone knows that when the Islamic armies expanded outside Arabia they carried out their usual practice of taking conquered peoples' ladies as sex slaves. One of the first lands they took over was Persia. Its Zoroastrian character was bound to raise questions over whether women from outside the group of "People of the Book" can be used for sex and not just for slavery since Islam forbids Muslim men from marrying a woman who is not a Muslim, Christian or Jew. It would help readers understand how Muslims historically justified having sex with women who were neither Muslim nor "People of the Book." Dr Silverstein (talk) 03:15, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

Wholescale reverts

This revert undoes nearly 2 weeks of work by several contributors without any sort of discussion. This is really disruptive.VR _talk 00:50, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

I agree? Buy then what about this wholesale revert earlier today? No one seemed to have taken an issue with my edits today or raised any objection on the talkpage yet you called them "disruptive," demanded that I seek consensus and did a wholesale revert despite me leaving clear edit summaries for each of my edits.

You then proceeded to threaten me from any further editing on my talkpage, by making out my edits look like a 3RR violation (which they were not). In an obvious case of WP:GAMING you are trying to keep me off the article so that you, Nishidani and Iskandar323 can bulldoze through your own changes unchecked without obtaining the consensus of other active editors such as Grufo and myself. Mcphurphy (talk) 01:16, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

The edits you made today were problematic.

• This addition states as fact something that is blatantly contradicted by Concubinage#Antiquity. You're misinterpreting Robinson. He specifically cites the cases of concubinage in Persia and Rome.
• This edit makes no sense given that the only women being referred to in that section are Muslim women.
• Why did you remove Suleiman being monogamous with his concubine? If the article mentions "Men were permitted to have as many concubines as they could afford" then we can also mention cases of monogamy.
• this edit adds something for which no reliable, secondary sources can be found (see this discussion).
• this edit removes something that we seemed to have consensus for.
• Why did you remove "in some historical periods"? I showed you here that there is debate over this issue.
• Here you added something partially false. You added "if a free man acknowledged paternity of his children from his female slave, they were considered free", yet this was only one opinion and other opinions considered concubines free even if the man didn't acknowledge the paternity (see Brockopp,2000,p=195–196).VR _talk 02:22, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

To be honest, I only didn't respond to more of the edits because it was too much of a headache and I didn't have the energy and rigour to do what Vice regent has done here: to list them all out. Your attitude that multiple editors are "bulldozing", not sensibly editing, is the principle problem here. Iskandar323 (talk) 06:25, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

• It might be worth mentioning that Vice regent reported Mcphurphy at A3N. --Grufo (talk) 13:13, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

POV pushing

A lot of POV pushing has been going on in my absence. There are multiple issues in this new version. Let us first resolve the trouble around the opening of the article before we move on to the rest of this mess.

Lead sentence

According to MOS:LEADSENTENCE "The first sentence should tell the nonspecialist reader what or who the subject is." The subject is clearly sex slaves in Islam. So why does it begin with Mediterranean and who knows what culture? No need to write up nonsense by including the whole world in it. Focus on Islam. Certain editors are incompetent to understand that their feeling that they need to "defend" Islam is against WP:NPOV. Its tendentious editing.

Umm Walad

Nishidani's Barker source reads: "'Female slaves around the Mediterranean were subject to sexual and reproductive demands as well as demands on their physical labour. Focusing on the sexual and reproductive aspects of the shared culture of Mediterranean slavery reveals three things. First, though historians have paid more attention to the sexual exploitation of slave women in Islamic contexts, sexual exploitation was also common and well documented in Christian contexts. Second, the most important difference between Islamic and Christian practices of slavery had to do with the status of children. Under Christian and Roman law, children inherited the status of their mothers, so the child of a free man and a slave woman would be a slave. In contrast, under Islamic law, if a free man acknowledged paternity of a child by his slave woman, that child was born free and legitimate.' (Barker 2019, p. 61)"

Now how is this little quote from Barker used to justify this? Niishi's edit reads: "This is decidedly different from the case of enslaved women who bore children to their masters in Mediterranean Christian cultures: there the child retained the same slave status as his mother."

Verification failed. Barker clearly does not anywhere say "decidedly different." Further, Barker also notes that the child not inheriting the mother's slave status is conditional on the father accepting paternity.

Nishi's edit falls under source misrepresentation.

I will open up sub-sections below on the ever increasing problems with the zealous new editing. Dr Silverstein (talk) 03:35, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

23:52, November 12, 2021, you were pinged to this article.

00:09, November 13, 2021, you show up to the article (after more than a year hiatus) and make this revert.

This link shows you reverted to a version 132 edits ago. You went through 132 edits in just 17 minutes? Or is it that you're reverting others' edits without even reading them? VR _talk 03:51, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

The phrasing "decidedly different" is a reasonable commonsense summation of the void between freedom and slavery. If that is the first and worst problem you have spotted then the issue is minor. Re: "zealous editing", as Vice regent notes: attempting to revert 132 edits in just 17 minutes = Pot. Kettle. Black. Iskandar323 (talk) 06:53, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

This is idle nitpicking, justifying an erasure on the grounds of one adverb in the paraphrase, 'decidedly' for 'one imporant difference'. One could use 'marked difference' or any of a dozen alternatives, but what is an important difference is 'decidedly' different in any reasonable view. And, drop the hammer about 'zealous' (a word with profound religious overtones) Nishidani (talk) 10:50, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

Global ping

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​I am pinging literally every user that has edited Talk:Sexual slavery in Islam and Sexual slavery in Islam (using template {{hidden ping}} – lists generated automatically here and here, from which I removed the IP addresses).

This article has never had an easy life. There are currently several issues opened. The most important are:

1. Title controversy: a new proposal to remove “sexual slavery” from the title has been opened (see Talk:Sexual slavery in Islam § Requested move 10 November 2021)
2. Content controversy: all edits that follow this Revision as of 15:42, 17 October 2021 from Vice regent, in which they add “The Arabic term surriyya has been widely translated in Western scholarship as "concubine"” are subject to controversy (I do not consider this particular edit controversial, although it reflects the editor's POV)

If you have time and you feel you can contribute constructively to Misplaced Pages, please consider participating in this discussion. --Grufo (talk) 16:50, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

Lead image

Is it possible to think over image of Nadia Murad or may be a collage of images as a lead image for this article.

Unfortunately we do not have many original images of sexual slaves during Islamic rules, for both reasons first is in Islam imagery of any living being including that of humans was is strongly discouraged, secondly in many parts of the world once captured, even if successful in an escape these sexually slaved women used to be despised even in their original communities without any mistake of their own so putting them on a canvass their real plight did not occur to most artists many artist in modern times drew female slaves in oriental frames objectifying them. We need to have more representational images in a collage.

Hurrem Sultan (Roxalena) was a slave–concubine, though she was a war captive, history is not fully aware how many times she was sold and resold, and she was among fewer fortunate ones who could make to top of elite ladder. So she can not be considered full representative of a sexual slave in Muslim world. Rather image of Hurrem Sultan (Roxalena) is used to eulogize possibilities of material and power opportunities; in reality only few did have that chance and position of rest of most female slaves had to suffer through despicable parade of sexual exploitation.

Singularly eulogizing fortunes of Hurrem Sultan (Roxalena) and few consensual elite concubines in Muslim world creates untrue distorted picture of larger reality leads to condoning phase of captivity, resale and sexual exploitation and normalizing the same even to 21 century audiences. There is no mistake on part of Hurrem Sultan (Roxalena) hereself but it is untrue narrative that wishes to show every Umm Walad was a happy being detached from her original family and community sans explicit consent. These Umm Walads/ concubines and sexual slaves in Muslim world used to have little choice of their own but to not to succumb and adjust and accept to misfortune. Once one is raped had a child and no easy options to feed the child a raped slave even might ask not to have emancipation in spite not liking status of slavery. That kind of compulsion do we understand as human?

It is very insincere on part of those who can believe in narratives that state of female slaves of medieval and premodern Muslim World was much better than what happened to ISIS female slaves. If '...' religion is superior then their followers would have understood and reflected upon simple thing that there is no reason what so ever to captivate, detach and enslave non–combatant females is violation of simple humanism. If captured then return them without condition. And if any sexual relationship taking place then with full explicit consent as happens in regular Nikah marriage; but unfortunately that was not to happen in the history of Muslim world.

There was/is no individual, group or philosophy fully perfect. On part of every individual, group or philosophy to hide imperfections on own side and do whataboutism and push sanitized narratives giving status of reliability to questionable narrative sources is not only insincere to oneself; Consider only five percent of women were sexually exploited through slavery, whether one is Muslim or not, over the centuries every one of us would have part of X chomosome in their genes which might have been sexually exploited in some previous generation unknown to us lost in the history. I wish our editors are more composed before engaging in edit wars, single minded pushing own versions and dislodging competitive versions and competing editors is being insincere to our own unfortunate X chromosome gene passed on to us from generation to generation. Anyways I am looking forward to better and more representative collage images at lead picture of the article.

Rather than just spending time on edit wars here please do give thought to update any of following drafts.
Draft:Women's rights in Muslim societies
Draft:Women, conflict and conflict zones
Draft:Comparison of rights and limitations of Muslim wives, female slaves and concubines
Draft:Slavery in Mecca and Medina

Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 07:08, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

1. Smith 2008. sfn error: no target: CITEREFSmith2008 (help)
2. Peirce 1993, p. 59. sfn error: no target: CITEREFPeirce1993 (help)

• I think a fairly coherent argument could be made that there is some cultural and moral relativism as work here, in the sense that medieval and modern practices were experienced very differently because the people in those times and places had different beliefs and expectations. Modern morals and social mores were not codified, and medieval people had the expectation that war often led to capture and enslavement.

However, these points aside, the most discernable different between historic practice is that while medieval slavery was sanctioned by mainstream religious scholars and society, the practice of the Islamic State sits firmly outside of today's mainstream thought and practice. Within a 21st century context, the Islamic State holds fringe viewpoints, and representing more than a millennia of historic practice with an image of practice by an unambiguous terrorist group with an only transitory hold on power would be a tad undue.

Might I suggest the picture that Mcphurphy actually quite helpfully added, in the form of a potentially more representative, but still historically couched image. Aside from being a rather spectacular piece by Giulio Rosati, it is somewhat more illustrative of a concubinage/harem type setup/experience than a mere portrait. As for the image of Nadia Murad, I would suggest that the first and foremost place to include this would be on the rather underwhelming and unillustrated Slavery in 21st-century jihadism page that the example caption leads to. Iskandar323 (talk) 07:51, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

See human behavior gives different experiences. At the height of COVID pandemic I was most happy with editor of COVID in Pakistan s/he did not shy away using sources fixing responsibilities be religious or non–religious institutions. While I found editorial behavior at general COVID & religion article quite disappointing. In the lead editors were mentioning all the creditable work in the name of religions same time not ready to include side of criticism at all while crores of people dying and suffering through the pandemic. I don't criticize behaviour on religion side only, even Wikipedian editorial behavior @ COVID related main article too was disinclined to mention need of mask and safe distancing with forceful criticism. General side misses point does not give free license to religious sides to be irresponsible.

See I have criticized others in above paragraph so I do not want to be unfair to fellow Muslims and Islam in appreciating and criticizing both 'where it deserves'. (emphasis on 'where it deserves')

There can be time scale related cultural and moral relativism to a limited extent only. One can see in ancient South Asian mythological wars hitting on some one's legs was frowned upon even in conflicts and wars, concept must have been better kill your enemy than leave him paralyzed in a way he would be unable to go asking for help for food and other assistance because that would have amounted slow and painful death. In modern times in conflict situation we prefer to save a life by shooting at one's hands and legs of a criminal or enemy in conflict situation. Since background of availability of post conflict assistance is changed. This example was just top of my mind at this moment while writing, similar other examples from rest of the world including that of Muslim world can be given no issues. For example until medieval times killing up enemy was better than converting him in disabled person who could not seek assistance for rest of life easily. They had to use stronger threat perceptions since other modes of investigation and community control were may not have been developed that we can understand.

But I find it difficult to accept any easy concessions for God and philosophies (whichever religious philosophies those may be) in his name and their agents that they could have been unfair in ancient or historic times. In spite of time scale effect some of humanitarian considerations can not be subjected to time scale when better alternatives were available then too. If God and philosophies (whichever religious philosophies those may be) in his name and their agents take credit about what good happens in their name, they also are expected to unreservedly admit to atrocities happening and religions and their agents looking other way. For example if scripture would have told clearly that just not encouragement of emancipation but every religious follower should not touch women in conflict zones many believers may have behaved differently and more positively. For this one can not give excuse saying that those times people were not aware, God and so their(his/her or whatever gender of God) scriptures had no excuse being all knowing fellow for all times, God had/ has no excuse of time scale allowing unfair things to happen. And if it is not God who was not giving wrong excuses then it is human beings giving those excuses for exploiting fellow humans in unfair atrocious manners. Whatever the time scale whatever times exploitation does not deserve accolades but deserves unreserved criticism and we Wikipedians afford to be more fair by using sources which duly fix responsibilities in sensible but unreserved manner. I can't force others to agree to my these points but IMHO sincerely said that; let us move on to–

Lead image:

I do appreciate your point Giulio Rosati, it is somewhat more illustrative of a concubinage/harem type setup/experience than a mere portrait. though nudity portrays female slave trade as is being objectified by traders but it does not intend to provide objectification to viewers of the picture. Same time traders were too diverse in color/ race religion and gender too. So may be we can short list some images to be rotated periodically secondly we can keep collage option too open.

Thanks for healthy discourse.

Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 09:52, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

As food for additional thought - WP:SHOCK suggests that:

1) "Lead images should be natural and appropriate representations of the topic; they should not only illustrate the topic specifically, but also be the type of image used for similar purposes in high-quality reference works, and therefore what our readers will expect to see. Lead images are not required, and not having a lead image may be the best solution if there is no easy representation of the topic."

2) "Lead images should be of least shock value; an alternative image that accurately represents the topic without shock value should always be preferred."

In my opinion, I would suggest that Islamic State-related images are not "the type of image used for similar purposes in high-quality reference works", that anything Islamic State-related is not "least shock value", and also, possibly, "not having a lead image may be the best solution". Iskandar323 (talk) 12:04, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

Let's see…

Lead images should be natural and appropriate representations of the topic

Now,

• Is Titian's painting of Roxalena – an exceptionally lucky sex slave – an appropriate representation of sexual slavery in Islam? No.
• Is Rosati's painting of generic Islamic sex slaves a more appropriate representation of sexual slavery in Islam? Definitely yes.

Issue solved. --Grufo (talk) 20:47, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

To provide fair opportunity and to improve women editor participation, an intimation of this ongoing discussion has been given @ WT:WOMRED, WT:WikiProject Women in Green, WT:WikiProject Women's History, Talk:Women in Islam, Talk:Sexual slavery. Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 10:41, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

Bookku, it would be a grotesque violation of WP:NPOV and WP:DUE to consider ISIS representative of Islam or all of Muslim history. We have many sources that show ISIS remains rejected in Islam . And this scholarly paper concludes that ISIS has distorted the interpretations of medieval Islamic texts on female slavery so much that they are "unique within the history of Islam." Your proposal is as WP:UNDUE as putting the flag of ISIS as the lead image at jihad. By contrast, I have never seen a book on the history of Islam that doesn't mention the Ottomans. The two states mentioned in the "Concubinage" entry of The Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Women are the Abbasids and the Ottomans. Concubines and Courtesans has a chapter on concubines in the Ottoman harem. Although if we can't come to an agreement, then it might be best to remove a lead image. Lots of great articles do not have a lead image.VR _talk 12:05, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

For articles of this length, there are few pics, and rather than curtail them, additions are required.Nishidani (talk) 14:18, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and added that Nadia Murad image to Slavery in 21st-century jihadism, so thanks for providing that @Bookku. Iskandar323 (talk) 14:54, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

I have also added it to Sexual violence in the Iraqi insurgency. Slavery in 21st-century jihadism and Sexual violence in the Iraqi insurgency are places where detailed coverage of ISIS atrocities are WP:DUE, not here.VR _talk 15:18, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

Sotheby's catalogues may help with getting the name of paintings right.

• There is a painting by Giulio Rosati, entitled Choosing the Favourite, which they sold for £133,250 on 30 November 2012. This is similar, but not identical to the image on Misplaced Pages.
• There is a painting by Giulio Rosati, entitled The Favourite, which they sold for £212,500 on 11 December 2019. This is identical to the image on Misplaced Pages.
• There is a painting by Giulio Rosati, entitled The Favourite, which is listed as a "past lot". This has two of the same women and one of the same men as the image on Misplaced Pages in much the same setting.

-- Toddy1 (talk) 21:22, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

Rosati is an Orientalist painter. This genre was well known for applying certain stereotypes against Middle Easterners. For example, Ottoman women were depicted by Orientalists as sexual, lascivicious, and lazy. Feminist and art historian Linda Nochlin went as far as to call these stereotypes racist. Racist or not, these stereotypes were definite exagerrations. Fatima Mernissi, an Arab feminist, "adroitly deconstructs the myth of the harem as paradise, an exotic place populated by nude, voluptuous women, as perpetuated in Orientalist literature and paintings." This is similar to what Nishidani pointed out earlier. And the stereotype of seeing harem women as sexual and lazy are plain to see in the painting too. If you read Concubines and courtesans, you'll see that these women were incredibly multi-dimensional people, whether royalty or commoner. VR _talk 23:20, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

@Vice regent: I don't know if you realize the level of clutching at straws you have reached. To criticize a particular painting you put its author into a category (Orientalism), search for flaws in this category, attribute these flaws to the particular painter, and consequently attribute these flaws to the particular painter's particular painting too. Your rhetorical fallacies are getting worse with time. You have just reached a recursive version of Argumentum ad hominem § Guilt by association. What's next? --Grufo (talk) 00:05, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

This is a completely gratuitous personal attack, coming straight out of left-field, Grufo, and so yet one more warning is required to desist. VR's point is focused, on topic, and devoid of animus, and you appear to have jumped at it ('grasping at straws') ('rhetorical fallacies getting worse with time') to provoke the editor.Nishidani (talk) 10:32, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Unless you believe that Vice regent is a living rhetorical fallacy there is nothing personal in attacking a rhetorical fallacy. --Grufo (talk) 12:50, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Umm, "orientalist" is right there in the first line ... anyway, @Vice regent: Yeah, ok, they're cool paintings, but you probably have a point that they're all fairly contrived and certainly not based on firsthand experience: we don't have to guess about whether Rosati had actual access to these places. Iskandar323 (talk) 05:05, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

“Orientalism” is a term coined in 1978. Rosati did not know he was an orientalist. He just painted what he liked to paint. This leads to fallacy of division too. --Grufo (talk) 05:53, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

"Orientalism" is a term coined in 1978 - really?-- Toddy1 (talk) 11:32, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

I think my mind just passed over that without even registering the absurdity of it. But once again, fantastic data @Toddy1 - I am totally making you my go-to guy/girl for data representation-related queries. I didn't even know about the Google Books Ngram Viewer. Iskandar323 (talk) 11:36, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Grufo's objection is misinformed. The French art critic Jules-Antoine Castagnary’s polemics against what he called the ‘orientalist’ painting genre go back at least 120 years before Said’s 1978 work. For the former, French painters who dealt in topics from the colonial world or the Orient in general were betraying an obligation to depict native French reality by an self-indulgent flight into fantasies of the exotic. In other words, the fact that 'orientalism' is lexically of relatively recent vintage would be irrelevant, since the concept itself was present in critical literature long before Said set the vogue. Nishidani (talk) 11:56, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

You people are again working in circles, and once again just for the sake of contradicting me. The orientalism against which Susan Edwards argues is the 1978 patronizing term. Earlier, the term simply had the generic meaning of “appreciation of the East in the arts” – although the phenomenon was in large part what today we consider patronizing. In fact, Jules-Antoine Castagnary attacked orientalists for being too interested in the East, not for patronizing the East. The ignorance of the modern patronizing meaning in the 19th century is exactly what creates a hiatus. An orientalist 19th century painter could have been “patronizing” or not at all “patronizing”, depending on their personal attitude and background, while a modern orientalist can only be patronizing. The lack of patronizing meaning before 1978 is what creates the fallacy of division in Vice regent's comment: even if many orientalists were patronizing the East, as orientalism was not defined on patronizing the East, many other orientalists might not have patronized the East. And indeed there is quite some difference of attitude between this and this. --Grufo (talk) 12:47, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

You people are again working in circles . . just for the sake of contradicting me

Oh dearie me! Isn't that an echo of what Gratiano caricatured as authoritative posturing in in the Merchant of Venice?

There are a sort of men whose visages

Do cream and mantle like a standing pond,

And do a willful stillness entertain

With purpose to be dressed in an opinion

Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit,

As who should say, “I am Sir Oracle,

And when I ope my lips, let no dog bark!

Nice to see you are so thoroughly conversant, instantly, with the Jules-Antoine Castagnary I mentioned that you ignore the critical literature on him, which states exactly what I wrote: that he was an advocate of French realism as against escapist orientalist fantasy. More disconcerting is the fact that you can't get beyond a simple caricature of Said 1978 (and his follow up Culture and Imperialism (1993), which was a polemic about Western 'representations' of the Oriental other. Don't google wiki articles to grub up 'stuff'. Do some reading of the authors you apparently cite by second-hand unfamiliarity.Nishidani (talk) 14:46, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

You claim of not arguing just for the sake of arguing, but yet there you are. All the modern meanings of orientalism are totally irrelevant when we talk about painters who perceived themselves only as having an interest in the East. That is the only thing relevant in my reasoning about fallacy of division; and any meaning that we might add today to orientalism is out of scope. About Castagnary you are saying exactly the same thing that I said, but arguing (on what?). --Grufo (talk) 15:00, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Have you read Jones, Jonathan (22 May 2008). "Orientalism is not racism. Edward Said's book on romantic views of Islamic art has the effect of promoting ignorance". The Grauniard.?-- Toddy1 (talk) 12:57, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

No, thanks for the link. Jones is an art critic, so he knows what he is talking about. Personally what I find problematic in loading “orientalism” of meanings is the assumption that the West is a single homogeneous bloc from where the East is observed. Although today we do tend towards that, it was surely not the case in the 19th and 20th century. But I would extend this critique to many superstructures and simplifications that we never stop creating. I'd rather keep thinking of orientalism as “appreciation of the East”, and add to that later, as a separate addition, “knowing the West, that means in most cases ‘patronizing the East’”. --Grufo (talk) 13:15, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

If that is also addressed to me, Toddy. I am on the public record as being critical of Said's book just after it first came out, and I do not accept much of its simplistic dismissal of a very complex record. Jones is undoubtedly correct that it has been hijacked as a cliché, but said is no more responsible for that than Nietsche is for the Holocaust, or Aristotle for what Bacon in his Novum Organum criticized late Aristotelians for. What Said wrote was more or less what modern anthropology stated of Victorian descriptions of primitive society. It was a very useful corrective to bias, and a reminder of how deeply the complacency of power is inscribed in much of our language about 'the other'.Nishidani (talk) 15:06, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Let me get this straight Grufo: When orientalist writers literally use the term "concubinage" in the Muslim world, you take umbrage at the use of the term and want to re-interpret this as "sexual slavery", but where orientalist painters create interpretive works, you see God's honest truth? Iskandar323 (talk) 06:45, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

I am still undecided whether you and I have difficulties communicating or you just like to make people talk. Rosati was an orientalist. However Rosati being an orientalist + this comment left by Vice regent translates in:

• Argumentum ad hominem § Guilt by association, in the form of: 1. Rosati liked to paint oriental subjects 2. We associate Rosati with Orientalism, which has an unfavorable reputation 3. Therefore, Rosati's paintings are questionable.
• Fallacy of division, in the form of: 1. Orientalists “apply certain stereotypes against Middle Easterners” 2. We categorize Rosati as an orientalist 3. Therefore, Rosati “applied certain stereotypes against Middle Easterners”

(And I have talked only about Rosati, not even about this particular painting, which would require further recursion in the fallacies.)

The fact that the term is modern makes also a further tuning necessary. For example you can say that every communist wants to share the means of production, as that is part of The Communist Manifesto, but you cannot say that all orientalists apply stereotypes, as they did not adhere to any “orientalist manifesto for the application of stereotypes” back then. --Grufo (talk) 07:13, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

You hardly need encouragement to talk, and VR may have been a little blusterous, but the reason to treat Rosati's work in a circumspect manner, regardless of the quality of the artwork itself aside, is that he almost certainly never actually entered the harems he depicted - and I think we can take this as wrote (given the whole point of harems is that they were, well, "forbidden") unless we see reliable sourcing to the contrary. Iskandar323 (talk) 07:26, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Before impressionism every single painting was made in a studio and based on the painter's memory, fantasy or other paintings – or a subject that could fit in the studio (e.g. portraits). After impressionism the old school still remained strong for many painters. There is really nothing peculiar about this particular painting, except your personal hate for seeing a sex slave depicted as such instead of wearing nice earrings and ruling a country. --Grufo (talk) 07:37, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Umm, I suggested this image in the talk, calling it "a rather spectacular piece by Giulio Rosati". Iskandar323 (talk) 07:42, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Then I take back the last sentence. But then why are you arguing with me about this painting? Leave that to Vice regent, who objects against it. --Grufo (talk) 07:47, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Because discussions aren't about which side you are on Grufo. Misplaced Pages isn't about polarised positions. I can suggest something one moment before being swayed in a different direction another. I am also freshly mulling on WP:SHOCK. Iskandar323 (talk) 07:56, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

You do the opposite of what you claim. You literally proposed a painting, saw that Vice regent took side against it while I was in favor, and made the discussion be “about which side I was on”. Btw, WP:SHOCK implies a selection between images that “accurately represents the topic”. Roxalena is not one of these. That aside, I find most of Rosati's paintings really beautiful (also unrelated ones). --Grufo (talk) 08:05, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

WP:SHOCK implies nothing: all Misplaced Pages guidelines are open to interpretation, and intepreting it altered my opinion. Now, while you have free time, perhaps return to the question of why you reverted my edit on Islam and blasphemy in order to re-include a picture containing insults and a url to the website platform of a man characterised as "virulently anti-Islamic". Iskandar323 (talk) 08:15, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

When I created Concubinatus I chose this ancient Roman fresco for it. I did not even think about the fact that nudity can still be a WP:SHOCK after two thousand years. Indeed I also believe that interpreting Rosati's painting changed your opinion. But I believe the interpretation that changed your mind has nothing to do with orientalism or WP:SHOCK, but only with the fact that sexual slavery is represented in the moment of “enslavement”, which you would like to be removed from existence, as if slaves were born as such (and instead “enslavement” is a representative part of the topic, much more than the elite harems). As for Islam and blasphemy, I will not go further, I have really made my position as clear as possible. For as much as you like to argue with me, six editors have restored those cartoons, you can also try to convince the others instead of me. --Grufo (talk) 08:26, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Again, I would like to remind you that it was I who initially suggested the image. Changing my mind reveals nothing at all of the sort of deeply seated ideological position that you seem to keep insisting that everyone who disagrees with you on Misplaced Pages has. I changed it because I weighed arguments. Once again, I would encourage you to desist from your WP:BATTLEGROUND mentality and stick to the nuts and bolts of Misplaced Pages policy and guidelines, as well as WP:CIVIL. Iskandar323 (talk) 08:34, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

• I completely agree with Nishidani that adding pictures to this article would be a good improvement to it. Iraniangal777 (talk) 06:58, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

• The wikipedia article on Giulio Rosati says "He devoted himself particularly to representations of the Maghreb, that he never visited himself" and "he never journeyed to the Middle East". Rosati is also chronologically far removed from the events he tries to depict. So why not consider artists who were both local and contemporaneous to the people they depict? The cover of the scholarly book Concubines and Courtesans depicts an image from the Akbarnama. This work is about Mughal India, by people who lived in India and during Mughal times. The exact painting that's on the book cover is this one and it seems to be public domain and is probably the best candidate for a lead image. VR _talk 13:47, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

  Concubines and Courtesans's cover can certainly be added too. Choosing an image for the lead is ultimately an arbitrary choice. However no painting is as icastic as Rosati's painting, which is not more phyisically and chronologically removed from the events than the painting of Hagar that appears in the lead of Concubinage, against which the Roman fresco would be the “local and contemporaneous” competitor (see? “local and contemporaneous” now sounds inconvenient, doesn't it?) --Grufo (talk) 14:01, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

  If you want alternative images for concubinage please start a discussion at Talk:Concubinage. We can find an image that is local and contemporaneous and that does not WP:SHOCK.VR _talk 14:06, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks to @Iraniangal777: and all the participants in the discussions up til now. I am replying the discussion from VR's comment onward. Encyclopedist need to be used to long academic discourses need not complain of length of the response

• "Bookku, it would be a grotesque violation of WP:NPOV and WP:DUE to consider ISIS representative of Islam or all of Muslim history. We have many sources that show ISIS remains rejected in Islam.."

Pl. try to answer my few simple questions; Whenever an ISIS follower would die, which kind of burial was/will be accorded to them? A Muslim kind or a non–Muslim kind?

In almost passing by 2021 I have multiple times discussed point of using word Muslim' in article title instead of 'Islam' unless articles are particularly limited to Islam.

I have already explained and I repeat, question is not of cases of ISIS only. There are cases (mentioned in perfectly credible/reliable sources) where in at least few Muslims had flouted rule of not capturing and selling non–slave Muslim women into slavery, in one case a husband itself sold his wife, the wife subsequently successfully proved to Ottoman authorities that she was a perfectly free woman and should not have been sold in as a slave, and Ottoman authorities freed her.

What happens if any painter draws a painting of above said Muslim women's sold into slavery by Muslims (illegal as per Ottoman / Islamic rule) We will say those were female slaves (though Muslim by birth) in Muslim world need to have space in the article either in textual reference or pictorial form whatever. What you will say, No Islam did not sanction selling of Muslims raised since birth so article can not have space for them. Why that is happening simply because Muslims want to happily name/ define every thing as Islamic though every thing that Muslims do is not necessarily Islamic every time, and non–Muslims unaware of this systemic issue. Article title need to have phrase 'Muslim world' and not 'Islamic' since that has been leading to systemic bias, even against unfortunate Muslim women too as just discussed.

In case of Muslim women wrongly sold into slavery by their fellow Muslim individuals had an opportunity to seek justice, prove and get free again. Now my simple question is whether those captive or bought slave girls and women had equal agency to appeal to the authorities and get free? No not at all. What were their crimes? Being girls and women from enemy territories who lost wars? Were those women active combatants in those wars? Except few exceptions countable on finger tips usually they were not active combatants.

Were not they free before being captivated? Why discrimination on the basis of religion by birth? Which religious philosophies were facilitating selectivity in providence of equity in opportunity to freedom?

Do you think academic sources have not started asking similar questions? One academic very well in above lists of reliable clearly states we no longer consider 'Owned by right hand' was a fair thing. Another academic clearly states their some of earlier writings were mellowed down to take care of Muslim sensitivities (pointing toward Edward Said followers even discrediting critics and criticism which Edward Said himself would not have allowed to censor, the same scholar says but so and so book onward we have corrected and calling spade a spade. Then there is one more academic admitted in a public debate that there are some holes in standard (Muslim) narratives. Another scholar mentions scholars write but write in toned down mode worrying about backlash and blasphemy laws and worrying about discrediting by Edward Said followers and fearing rejection even editorial boards and publishers fear such rejection. Idk what would one call sources under fear as compromised or reliable?

Another editorial point of view: "..Within a 21st century context, the Islamic State holds fringe viewpoints.."

ISIS /AQ/BH/H@P/Brotherhood/Tea & company of Afghanistan are fringe, Wahabi are fringe, Salafi are fringe, Deoband are fringe, Sufi are fringe, Shia are fringe, Political activism are fringe, Politically not active are fringe, Shia are fringe, Ibadi are fringe, Ahmadiyya are fringe, prioritizing Sunnat are fringe, prioritizing different Hadith are fringe, abrogating some verses and some Hadith are fringe, prioritizing main scripture are fringe, remaining aqidah are fringe; So ultimately who remains in main stream, above discussed human fearing (not God fearing) phoney compromised academics represented by hardly few among Muslims?

One more important logical fallacy: Is Nadia Murad is representing ISIS or female slaves to oppose her image? "To the minimum Murad was a female slave of some self declared Muslims". At a female slave level how she is different from any other female slave captured or bought or owned by any previous Muslim regimes? Minimum at captivating, buying and owning female slavery culture whether Medieval or up to this century seems same. If you do not want image of Nadia Murad get drawn a sketch –from worlds most famous painter get it passed from your most preferred academia and publication– of a free Muslim woman being attempted to be sold in Ottoman times and getting justice but rest of the female slaves not having same agency.

"...Although if we can't come to an agreement, then it might be best to remove a lead image. Lots of great articles do not have a lead image.." Partially agree image in the article is not so important since "every one in the humanity has part images in their own 'X chromosomes' just they are not aware about it." Just be bold to put this statement in the article, truly then we won't need any other image for the article, I would agree then.

Again am I criticizing Muslims only, not really, to avoid whataboutism I did not discuss Caroline Blyth and Jane Davidson-Ladd's article (Chapter 9) A Theology of Rape: Plundering the Woman’s Body in Deut. 21:10–14 and Louis John Steele’s Spoils to the Victor earlier. This feminist article will let one know connection from Deut. 21:10–14 until IS. The article focuses more on Bible, but just reading of Deut. 21:10–14 and replacing later scriptural names in same article will help one giving exact deconstruction for debate on discussion happening here. If feminists and academics have not touched this topic there in that article other scholars will be toned down out of fear but will be exposing the flaws this way or that way. Censorship are not sustainable for ever.

IS ideologies are not necessarily most ideal, is a thing to be taught in Madrasas and preaching to the fellow community. Scholars and Encyclopedia job is to present analysis of things as they stand.

I will come back to the image of Rosati in a short while.

Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 14:41, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

@Bookku: You really need to learn to make your point in fewer words. This is heavy. If you don't want to do it for us, do it for Misplaced Pages, which has better use for all the kB storing article information, and the environment, which will benefit from the fewer emissions of less intensive server traffic. Iskandar323 (talk) 14:49, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

(ec) With all due respect. See WP:TLDR, and WP:NOTFORUM. The talk page addresses specific article issues to resolve them, one by one. This talk page is vastly exceeding, every week, the length of the article itself, which is what requires hands-on editing. I suffer from the same vice, so my advice is not unfriendly, but from experience. Be concise, and speak to specific article usage, or textual details, and we can benefit from your learning.Nishidani (talk) 14:54, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

@Bookku After trudging through a little of this wall of text, I'd note that what you say about fringe material is both ridiculous hyperbole and an obvious straw man style of argumentation, particularly when you get to "...Sufi are fringe, Shia are fringe...", which I sincerely doubt anybody has ever said. The question therein being: who are you talking to? Is this an internal monologue? If so, again, please save the space and keep it to yourself. As the text at the top of many talk pages says, this is not a forum. If you want to rant, head to reddit. Logic fallacy? Hardly. Because no one has suggested it. If there is a sensible discussion to be had about imagery, this is not it. To your more general point - going back to Misplaced Pages ABC: Just because something has some link to a subject does not automatically make it notable with regards to it. This is not a directory: this is an encyclopedia - the lowest bar of inclusion is not existence, i.e.: anything that may or may not have Islamic characteristics, but notability, i.e.: stuff that is reliably established in notable sources to be representative of a subject at large. I frankly don't even know where to begin with the rest of the above. Iskandar323 (talk) 15:03, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

I suggest editors get back to specifics. All of this talk takes on, wittingly or not, the semblance of cunctator tacticism, burying general consensus about, for example, the need for a title change. The page needs steady focused section by section revision to make it an informed neutral survey of feminine slavery in the Islamic world.Nishidani (talk) 15:12, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Don't start quoting Latin @Nishidani, you'll set Grufo off again. Couldn't you have just used the term filibuster or something? Iskandar323 (talk) 15:49, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

By looking at their page, Nishidani and I might have more than one interest in common (although important disagreements too). It's a pity for the-enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend-mentality though. --Grufo (talk) 15:58, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

I had nothing to do with the Crollalanza theory of Shakespeare authorship page, other than creating it as a stub to dump junk plunked down on the Shakespeare Authorship Question page. The article shouldn't even exist, since I rewrote it as the Florian theory of Shakespeare authorship, about which no person in their right mind could find substantial reasons to voice 'disagreements'. As to the mentality to read inimicality into exchanges, in the wording of the sound advice in Matthew: ἀγαπᾶτε τοὺς ἐχθροὺς ὑμῶν καὶ προσεύχεσθε ὑπὲρ τῶν διωκόντων ὑμᾶς, the word 'agapein' is not a synonym for βινειν, i.e., an hortation to 'screw' one's adversaries.

Extensive discussions requiring at this point a result

• (1) Who is for a title change, and who opposed? Please suggest either an alternative title or a rejection of a change, rather than discuss.

I'm fine with something along the lines of 'Concubinage and female slavery in Islam'. Any overlap with related articles can be fixed by transposition of material from one article to another.Nishidani (talk) 16:49, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure how this helps when there is already an official renaming discussion ongoing, but obviously me, and I would note that the phrasing that has currently garnered the most support, at least hypothetically, is: History of concubinage in the Muslim world (slave-concubinage for @Toddy1) Iskandar323 (talk) 17:02, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Well, fine. History of (slave-) concubinage in the Muslim world is fine by me. There are limits to how long discussions can drag on.Nishidani (talk) 17:13, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

To sum up the discussion (shout if I've missed anyone), it included: @Vice regent and @M.Bitton in favour of History of concubinage in the Muslim World, and I was also willing to support this, while @Toddy1 and @Jushyosaha604 voted in favour of the modified slave-concubinage option, while users that expressed a preference for no change, minimal change or were non-committal included @Grufo, @Srnec and @Mcphurphy (the latter saying they would not oppose a change from "in Islam" to "in the Muslim World"). Iskandar323 (talk) 17:49, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

• (2) Who can clarify our image choices?

I'm fine with an 'Orientalist' image or two, because Western representations of slavery are part of the narrative (and should be written up).Nishidani (talk) 16:49, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

I'm not wedded to Roxalena, and could go for a Rosati, say , or perhaps this rather more neutral Laurens: Iskandar323 (talk) 17:09, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Sometimes I am astonished by humans' ability of not admitting their own deep desires to themselves. You are fine with The Harem Dance by Rosati? If any representation can go a bit towards what Vice regent was criticizing as depicting Ottoman women as “sexual, lascivicious, and lazy” is that painting by Rosati. Why did we discuss so long about orientalism if your intention was only that of rejecting the more realistic Inspecting New Arrivals due to indigestion? We really are at “any excuse will do” here… Of course my vote will go to Inspecting New Arrivals, it is by far the most appropriate painting for this page and shows what no other painting shows: the enslavement process. --Grufo (talk) 18:40, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

I am rejecting the "more realistic" one because this is an unqualified adjectival statement. Inspecting New Arrivals shows a specific male-female type encounter that may or may not be entirely unrealistic. The Harem Dance simply shows women in a lavishly decorated harem-type setting guarded by what I presume is a male eunuch -- all of which, if true, seems fairly par for the course of Ottoman-style harem setups. You ignored the Laurens option? Iskandar323 (talk) 18:55, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

It is more realistic in the intentions, more or less like a drama differs from a comedy. I don't know the story behind each painting, but we can imagine The Harem Dance sold as a decorative/entertaining painting. Inspecting New Arrivals instead seems to answer a higher call, and definitely more committed is the subject. The Harem Dance looks like it wants to make you forget that those are slaves, Inspecting New Arrivals instead wants to make you realize that they are. --Grufo (talk) 19:04, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

All of this sounds like your WP:OR, unless you can find sources to back that up. I would prefer Laurens because he actually visited Turkey and Persia. VR _talk 19:06, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

It's quite WP:BLUESKY that nobody smiles in Inspecting New Arrivals, there is no need of a source. Not having been in a place does not constitute a valid argument for the exclusion of a painting. The only thing we need to look for is if it describes the content well. Both Laurens and Rosati do, although they are not equally direct (Laurens' women are four, they could be wives instad of slaves, while nobody would have any doubt with Rosati) and they cover different aspects of sexual slavery (everyday life and enslavement respectively). --Grufo (talk) 19:28, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

There is also David Roberts who visited Egypt and has a painting of a slave market featuring women. If Grufo's objective it to highlight the slave process, then this painting does so without the unnecessary offense of nudity. MOS:OMIMG recommends that if two images are equally educational, we should pick the one gives less offense. In this case I'd say Roberts is way more education than Rosati (because he saw what he painted).VR _talk 19:18, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Roberts is not bad, however I believe that nobody will support your argument about the nudity in a painting as offensive if you go to RfC. This is really a basic ground. --Grufo (talk) 19:33, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

@Grufo: What you say about The Harem Dance only holds true if you are good at forgetting that - A) women don't usually tend to spend their time hanging out together in Ottoman palaces, and that - B) the black eunuchs guarding them were also, of course, slaves. Iskandar323 (talk) 19:26, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

It's really not a bad painting. It only surprised me that compared to Inspecting New Arrivals it moderately looks like the most orientalist one of the two (if we intend orientalism in this context as escapist fiction). --Grufo (talk) 19:40, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Well for the moment let us include Roberts? Nishidani (talk) 19:37, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Let's do by majority, and I will not oppose Roberts if it wins or if we remain as we are and no one else answers the call in the meanwhile (after all the page is still blocked). I still slightly favor Inspecting New Arrivals, so if other editors will ask for that I will back them. But as I said, I will not oppose Roberts if the numbers for Rosati are missing. @Bookku: What do you think? --Grufo (talk) 19:44, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

I say add them all - as you say, needed more pictures anyway: good brainstorming session. Roberts would be fine. Iskandar323 (talk) 20:16, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Here is my summary of choices:

• For the lead image, I'd support the image from Akbarnama above, that is also the cover image of the scholarly work Concubines and Courtesans. The artists that produced this lived close to (both in time and in geography) the people they depict.
• For the image that shows the slavery aspect of concubinage, I prefer Roberts' painting of a slave market in Cairo. Roberts is superior to Rosati as he actually visited the places he depicts and therefore are more accurate.
• As Nishidani says above, we can have two Orientalist images. But we really shouldn't have any more. We have ample paintings from inside the Muslim world from different periods and locations, so why should we entirely depict the Muslim world through the fantasies of Europeans? For the second Orientalist image I suggest the portrait by Titian of Roxalena. She is one of the most famous concubines in Muslim history, to which a lot of scholarly attention has been devoted. Her portrait also doesn't appear to include any of the typical Orientalist tropes about Muslim women (sexual, lazy, etc).
• Further images should prioritize art from non-Orientalist other sources: medieval Arab art, Mughal art, Persian art, old photographs, modern photographs of ancient objects and buildings associated with concubinage, etc. (Although if we decided to have a large image gallery then we could include more Orientalist works)

VR _talk 20:20, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

While I get your point about the Akbarnama being more contemporaneous than some of the images, the rather abstract nature of this type of medieval artwork does detract somewhat from the realism - these images aren't easy to understand or what I would call "natural" - you see figures, but it's not easy to tell what they are all up to and even their gender is a bit hard to make out unless you zoom in. Even then, it only really gives the impression of a scene at any medieval court. Iskandar323 (talk) 20:40, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Sorry, I forgot to mention that we can choose not to have a lead image, if we can't find one that is totally representative. We can still have images in the body.

But regarding clarity, I disagree. Anytime we use medieval images there are almost always clearer pictures available (eg depiction in modern film, modern illustrations and cartoons, 3D animation etc). But medieval paintings are often used because they also have historic significance despite being unclear. They present how a very significant group saw the subject of the article. These paintings have shaped perceptions of the subject over centuries. This is also why I think Orientalist paintings have a place here, as they shaped perceptions of Muslim concubines for a long time.VR _talk 20:53, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

In any case, even if we were to use a medieval picture of concubinage in Islam, I think an Ottoman depiction would be most appropriate, as this is the period that, if any, has become most emblematic of the concept of concubines and harems. Or, as you say, no lead image at all. If simpler. Iskandar323 (talk) 21:26, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

The Aurut Bazaar illustration by Thomas Allom

May I suggest to consider The Aurut Bazaar by Thomas Allom. He was professional architect and illustrator who personally visited Istanbul personally and had drawn the illustration.

Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 10:05, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

Like it. On theme. Good source. Looks realistic. And black and white is always classy. Iskandar323 (talk) 10:18, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

Idem. Include. Nishidani (talk) 10:33, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

The Slave Market, Constantinople William Allan (painter)

William Allan (painter) too has visited personally not only Turkey but also Russia, Crimea and Circassia and drawn the paintings there. He seem to have drawn a painting called 'The Sale of Circassian Captives to a Turkish Bashaw (1816)'. IDK if The Slave Market, Constantinople painting and The Sale of Circassian Captives to a Turkish Bashaw are same or different.

Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 10:34, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

Giulio Rosati

I do not know the technical thing for the reason link to just before mentioned, Caroline Blyth and Jane Davidson-Ladd's article (Chapter 9) A Theology of Rape: Plundering the Woman’s Body in Deut. 21:10–14 is not working, may be some one can help.

The same article discusses, Louis John Steele’s female slave related painting 'Spoils to the Victor' reviewing Christian female slavery side, the reason part of that discussion is relevant here is, it analyses and helps making difference between a nude drawn for depiction of realism and a nude drawn for male gaze. And that discussion can be useful hear to discuss and decide what an artist is achieving depiction of reality or painting viewer's male gaze? Their discussion is longer and interesting, those interested need to read there first is better. Again one need to make distinguish between depiction of male gaze of male in the drawing and male gaze for the viewer of drawing.

With Rosati's inclusion of Arabic script in painting and many real seeming series on Ottoman time markets, if he has not visited Muslim world then he might have been closely assisted. Paintings do not depict Ottoman world in any deliberate negative light. Focused on presenting the world as is. He might have produced series of paintings so we come across different paintings in same series, but over all percentage of nude slave paintings is limited in comparison to rest of series focusing on rest of market activities like selling carpets and cloth etc.

IMO Rosati seem to depict common female slave at private female slave sale hall. Rosati's painting seem less interested in painting for viewer's male gaze but seem to normalize 'attitude' and male gaze of female slave owners and buyers, while female slave's plight seems taken into account but still relatively marginal. Better part, at least he is covering sexual exploitation of commoner female slave to an extent.

Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 09:17, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

Proposed new article

It seems to me there is room for an article concubinage (Islam) to address that specific issue, with a main link from an appropriate section of this article. It seems to be an important and well-sourced topic in its own right, and a significantly different topic to sexual slavery and to concubinage as the term is more generally understood in English. There is a problematic and long section at concubinage#Middle East which might be improved if most of its content were to be moved to an article specifically on Islam, and an article at Islamic views on concubinage which would be more helpfully titled concubinage (Islam) as it is about the concept within Islam, rather than including Islamic views on for example priestly concubinage... a topic on which we should also have an article even if it is just a Christian phenomenon... see https://academic.oup.com/past/article-abstract/1/suppl_1/72/2948734 and https://vincentians.com/en/the-poor-country-people-of-seventeenth-century-france/ for two references to it. Comments? Andrewa (talk) 04:34, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Andrewa, the sources used in this article overwhelmingly use the term "concubinage" (please look at this table). As I pointed out above, there really isn't a single RS that tries to cover all forms of sexual slavery across all of the Muslim world. Individual instances of sexual slavery in the Muslim world are notable (like bacha bazi), but sources don't attempt to connect all of them. This is similar to Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Persecution by Muslims. While individual instances of persecution by Muslims are notable (eg. Armenian genocide, Persecution of Bahai), trying to lump all of them in the same article was an WP:ATTACK page that was deleted due to WP:Coatrack, WP:Synth and pov-pushing. Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Pederasty in the Middle East and Central Asia was deleted for similar reasons.VR _talk 04:54, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

@Vice regent: You really need to use decent arguments. You cannot state that the very same historical/scriptural institution is OK if you call it “Concubinage in Islam”, but becomes WP:ATTACK if you call it “Sexual slavery in Islam”. Please, think before commenting. --Grufo (talk) 05:05, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Except that "concubinage" is a term for an actual institution that was applied in slightly varying but broadly consistent forms based on theology across a wide geographical area and which can appropriately be discussed as such in an article, while "sexual slavery" is a modern term that is being applied retroactively to re-interpret (and arguably sexualise, sensationalise and revise) history. Iskandar323 (talk) 05:43, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Oh, come on, you know that many sources call it sexual slavery / slavery / slavery for pleasure / slave concubinage / etc. This continuous moving the goalposts is what I find exhausting. Also it is the other way around: “concubine” was used retroactively to describe something for which the English vocabulary did not have a name, i.e. the Arabic surriyya, “slave for concubitus, sex”. --Grufo (talk) 05:58, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

@Andrewa: What would the scope of Concubinage (Islam) be? Sex between free persons and cohabitation outside marriage? In that case we have already Zina § Adultery and fornication (although a very small section). Sexual slavery? In that case we have already this page and a WP:POVFORK of this page created by Vice regent at Islamic views on concubinage. --Grufo (talk) 05:02, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

The scope would be concubinage as the term is currently understood in Islam. This seems to me to be a clear and encyclopedic topic, and would be very helpful to readers. There may be several views on this, or there may be a consensus within Islam. That is one thing that the article should make clear. The relationship between the modern Islamic use of the term concubine and what is described in Genesis referring to Reumah, Bilhah, Zilpah and others should also be made clear.

It may well be better to move and rescope an existing article rather than to start a new one. It may even be that concubinage as currently understood in Islam is a form of sexual slavery as the term is currently used generally... this is one issue with which we are struggling here. Developing an article on concubinage (Islam) would help that process, as well as being worthwhile in itself. Andrewa (talk) 06:46, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

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