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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Jmabel (talk | contribs) at 17:00, 31 May 2005 (→Totally POV: IZAK asked me to comment, so here 'tis). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Totally POV

Sentences like "Muhammad's delight in their death" are very POV. Not to mention there is no mention here of the veracity of the sources considering most Hadith were written centuries after the events happened.Yuber 22:43, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

The sentence has been fixed. Shahih Bukhari is considered by most Muslims to be the most reliable collection of hadith. Any other issues? Jayjg 13:50, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

Bukhari sid that only the Warriors were killed, a number far less than 900. Read this and this. This entire article relies on Ishaq's story of events, a man who the 'imam of the imams' described as "reckless", indeed Malik referred to him as "a liar", "an impostor" and one "who transmits his stories from the Jews". Not the greatest of sources, you will agree... actually you won't agree, because it fits your agenda to assume otherwise. --Irishpunktom\ 15:23, May 31, 2005 (UTC)

IZAK asked me to take a look at this, but it's a topic I know almost nothing about, so my only comments will be process-oriented.

]: Your "actually you won't agree" is totally uncalled for, and approaches the level of an ad hominem attack. I see nothing that Jayjg has done on this article (ore, really, any other article) that indicates bad faith. He and I are not particularly similar in our politics, but our subject-matter interests overlap, so I've found myself working with him on a number of articles. He's generally a pretty cooperative editor. Does he tend, when starting articles, to work from sources close to his own views? Yes. Sure. Almost all of us do: we almost all (except maybe Cberlet!) spend more time reading authors we tend to agree with than those we don't. Has he occasionally been reluctant to accept certain citations by people he disagrees with? Yes, occasionally, though those have tended to be unusual citations, e.g. self-published eyewitness accounts, which I am more inclined to credit than he is, but where I can certainly see how they at least rub up against Misplaced Pages's policy against original research.

There is no rule against editors having political views, and no rule against editors having political views different from one's own. There is a rule against bad-faith edits (but I see no evidence of that: if you think that is happening, you might want to raise the issue explicitly, and possibly start an RfC) and there is a rule against personal attacks (and, on that basis, I suggest you tone down your rhetoric).

In any event, when multiple, confilicting, palusible, contemporaneous or near-contemporaneous sources exist for historical events, the conflicting versions should almost always both be mentioned in the article, each with an indication of its source. If there are arguments why one version should be considered more plausible than the other, that should typically be mentioned, too. The article need not—in this case, I suspect, cannot—present a single version of events as Truth, but it can truthfully present what the conflicting sources each say, and what factors might be reasonably weighed in evaluating those sources. (On the other hand, if there is real consensus among historians that one version is considered authoritative, or if it can be shown that only historians of a particlular political affiliation hold with one of the views, that should be covered, as well.) -- Jmabel | Talk 17:00, May 31, 2005 (UTC)