Talk:History of concubinage in the Muslim world

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)

This new edit

This new edit by Wiqi55 removes the passage's longstanding sourced words "and she detested him" and replaces it with the following irrelevant words "but she later chose to return to her husband and cousin."

The fact that this woman returned is already conveyed in the final paragraph of the section Women of Hawazin wherein it is stated "Likewise, the girls given to Talha, Uthman, Ibn Umar and Safwan bin Umayya were also returned to their families." I will shift Wiqi55's extra detail next to this sentence. It makes more sense to include that Zaynab chose to return to her husband when the text talks about the return of the women instead of the part of the text which describes Muslim soldiers having sex with their captives earlier. But I see no rationale for removing the words "she detested him" when the sex is being discussed. It merely shows that Zaynab detested Uthman who had sex with her. That is also how it appears in the cited source wherein it states "Uthman had intercourse with her and she detested him. The addition of the fact that this woman chose to return to her husband and cousin only strengthens the fact that she detested Uthman, for if she liked the man who had sex with her, she would not have chosen to return to her husband. Mcphurphy (talk) 09:51, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

What you're saying is a textbook example of WP:SYNTH: "If Waqidi says A, and Ibn Ishaq says B, then let us combine A and B to make C -- i.e., she both detested him and preferred her cousin!" That's original research. Instead, we need to attribute each statement inline with wp:due. As I explained in my edit summary, Ibn Ishaq's version is notable and quoted by many later historians (I cited one). To determine weight, could you cite a secondary source referring to Waqidi's "detest"?

Moreover, you're probably not familiar with Arabic otherwise you would've known that Waqidi is just using a term often used in the context of divorce. See, for example, how Waqidi uses detest to describe a woman who divorced many husbands.[1] It is also used for rejecting a marriage proposal. It doesn't imply any of the negative nuances of detest, like "loath" or "extreme hate". Wiqi⁽⁵⁵⁾ 23:38, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

No but this edit of yours certainly falls under WP:SYNTH and WP:OR. The Waqidi source says categorially that Zaynab detested Uthman (whether that was in the context of women wanting to divorce/leave her sexual partner or having extreme hate is irrelevant and is your own original research - which is prohibited). Instead of following the source as it is worded, what you are doing is removing the second part of the sentence sourced from Waqidi and taking another source (Ibn Ishaq) and mixing its words with the first half of the sentence from Waqidi to produce a meaningless sentence which reads "Uthman had sexual intercourse with her but she later chose to return to her husband and cousin." with the aim of obfuscating the fact that Zaynab did not like the man who had sex with her. Mcphurphy (talk) 04:11, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

The source in the diff clearly supports both parts of the sentence; you probably can't read Arabic or don't know how use Google Translate. You also shouldn't present Waqidi's statement as corroborating Ibn Ishaq's because that's original research. It is equally possible to think of these statements as contradictory or a paraphrase -- Ibn Ishaq is often considered the source of Waqidi. The part you claim is about having sex actually also includes Ibn Umar's journey and return of his captive. Furthermore, I didn't cite Ibn Ishaq directly. I cited an annotated biography of Zaynab written by a later historian. Thus the notability of Ibn Ishaq's statement is supported by a secondary source. By contrast, the "detest" claim is not deemed notable by anybody except you. You even admitted above that you have no idea what exactly Waqidi means by it. Wiqi⁽⁵⁵⁾ 06:40, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

Greetings, Came across this Q&A regarding same issue. It seems according to other versions 'Zaynab bint Hayyan' seems to have liking for some one else and decided to return; even in that case practice of taking women captive allotting them as a war booty, treating them like property and enforcing sexual relations sans explicit consent it's not that the fellows did not know of concept of consent at all, in official marriage consent is asked 3 times but if it is case of captive women consent is not asked fails to generate due ethical confidence. Ex–Muslims are already raising these questions some of their literature will get through reliable academic sources it is just matter of time.

Hence transparency only would be best policy. Whatever number of 'related' primary sources are there present them in original Arabic language, then provide word by word translation and then provide secondary source commentaries. Then let the audience decide how to formulate and render the available information in the encyclopedia.

Thanks and warm regards

Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 03:46, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

• I agree with Wiqi55. There must be reliable secondary sources for every statement in this article, and if there are none, then it should be omitted. Using Waqidi as a source is problematic (see Al-Waqidi#Critics).VR _talk 18:58, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Neutrality template

I wonder if the neutrality of this article is, perhaps, questioned only because it is a controversial subject, which can clearly be seen in its edit history, as it is often vandalized and clearly arouse emotions - rather than being actually lacking in neutrality. Perhaps the neutrality template should be removed, if it only there because of people with bias? I have no idea if this assumption is true or not; I just thought I should mention it, because of the emotional edit history and consistent vandalization of the article.--Aciram (talk) 11:37, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

I agree. It seems in /Archive 3, which contains conversation that took place at the time this template was added, that there is contention about whether the article should use "sexual slavery" or "concubinage" in the title, so someone may have added the template to indicate that a dispute was underway. However, when someone slaps the template onto an article without explaining why on the talk page, this can be considered drive-by tagging and it can be removed. I am removing it. ~Anachronist (talk) 13:33, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

This article does have serious neutrality (and even some WP:SYNTH) issues. It was not merely drive-by editing, I think I placed the template and I explained in great detail why I did. Those issues are still not resolved.VR _talk 01:36, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

On side note: If neutrality and reflecting on imperfections are good values then open encyclopedias should become religion and religion should become open encyclopedia, probably that would be better way to resolve such disputes Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 03:18, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

If you question the neutrality of the article, you should explain why. The issue here is, that people with a religious bias may want to question the neutrality simply because they feel certain information place their religion in bad light, even if it is correct information. I don't know what the syaing above is suppose to mean, but religious bias should be kept away from this article as well as every article here. The neutrality of these articles are always in danger from religious bias. There shall be no re-definition of what neutrality is, and certainly not to a definition that say religious bias should be redefined to mean neutrality. --Aciram (talk) 03:30, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

I do fully agree with you, when religious bias fails to reflect internally then likely to blame others for being biased. Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 03:40, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

@Aciram: sure here is a non-exhaustive list of reasons:

• The article name (and subsequent terminology) is biased. We have overwhelming evidence that WP:SCHOLARSHIP prefers the term "concubinage" to "sexual slavery" when describing this phenomenon. I gave examples from around 40 (that's right, 40!) scholarly sources (published by BRILL, Yale University Press, Harvard University Press etc). See this and this. But the response was that the authors of these scholarly sources "happen to be Muslim themselves and want to put the most positive spin on it as they can, so they choose to use a more sanitized, yet less accurate term". The idea that we should dismiss scholarly sources because they are authors happen to be Muslims is ridiculous (and possibly even Islamophobic).
• The article gives WP:UNDUE weight to historical instances that WP:RS hardly talk about (as Wiqi55 alluded in above discussion). The article goes into detail about a story for which reliable, secondary sources can't even be found.
• This article only contains certain POVs but omits other very significant POVs. For example, it has a section on forced conversion but fails to mention the most important Quranic verse on this matter (and well covered by RS). Another example was discussed here about how the article selectively quotes certain opinions on dress prescriptions but omits others.
• As shown here the article WP:CHERRYPICKs sources.VR _talk 04:44, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

My first contention is etymologically word Concubine meant 'inferior wife' (Islam has no concept of Inferior wife all wives ought to be equal so Concubine is an un–Islamic Bidʻah term Pl. read again) , but if any given religion allows unrestrained polygamy Concubine amounts to be wife, inferior though. For this article what happens in other religion is immaterial.

In the religion under discussion first relationship categorisation happens one basis of Mahram or non–Mahram. Then a relationship is halal(licit) or haram (illicit), in halal (licit) relationships a woman can be a wife if not wife then Umm Walad slave, who is not Umm Walad slave but slave in sexual relationship until she bears a child she is plain Sex slave, then there would be a category of female slaves without maintaining sexual relationship but owner of 'female property' has right to create a relationship with her any time so such female slave amounts to be slave available for sexual slavery. Some one is wife or sexually available slave, there is no scope for any concubine (inferior wife) in the religion under discussion. One more category of freed i.e. emancipated slaves is their but that is in a way 'previously available–Sex slaves'.

As discussed earlier, concept of marital consent is very expressively available for wife in the religion under discussion, the same explicit religious provision of consent is not seen for sexually available slave women. So for just being politically right usage of word Concubine does not seem to make any sense and any scholarship doing so becomes dubious scholarship.

Last but not least, though " 'theoretically effective practically implemented, Sexual slavery', very well existed in the religion under discussion", on some other count as I have discussed elsewhere is Sexual slavery in Muslim societies better title since as per religious diktat a 'non–slave Muslim woman' is not supposed to be salable, but there are several instances (available with reliable sources) where in Muslim individuals and communities have been observed to have indulged in enslavement of Muslim women too without properly bothering about what their religion says. So it is unfair and untruthful not to use wording sexual slavery where it deserves similarly it would be more fair to use term Sexual slavery in Muslim societies.

Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 11:01, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Booku just gave an original research explanation concluding with "usage of word Concubine does not seem to make any sense and any scholarship doing so becomes dubious scholarship." So basically any WP:RS that disagrees with Bookku's personal POV is "dubious". Remember I provided 40 sources here and here. I'm hoping Anachronist, who is an admin (and removed the neutrality template) can chime in.VR _talk 16:38, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

@Vice regent: I removed the template because could not find any archived comments about placing it. All I found was discussion about 'concubinage' that seemed to have ended. Now that the dispute has resumed, the template should stay until it is resolved. I am not a party to this dispute and have not formed any view one way or the other.

It seems to me that 'concubinage' is a subset of 'sexual slavery' and that many sources in this article discuss exactly the title of this article as it currently stands, so 'sexual slavery in Islam' seems to be a valid article topic, as does 'concubinage in Islam'. Perhaps a split into two topics is in order? Or is there too much overlap between them? ~Anachronist (talk) 20:06, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

It's kind of circular argument. First of all which sources are reliable is subjective & open for deliberations by Wikipedians hence in Wikipedia talk page discussions Wikipedians do have right to express why any particular set of sources do not match encyclopedic expectations. This has been done by User:Vice regent/VR too on several occasions in other article discussions, even on narrow scope of some one being of particular religious or continental background or not. So there is nothing wrong if users in previous discussions thought of VR cited sources to be biased being soft cornering particular religious view.

It is just not matter of personal PoV, Usage of term Concubinage too is sexual exploitation since status of the woman is not equal to the wife, but slave's sexual exploitation is much more. There are more differences between slave and concubine but main is relationship of concubine is more likely to be consensual and in sex slavery consent is missing or under duress.

Usage of term 'Concubine' only covers only a minuscule minority of those slave women who willingly ended up in elite Sultan's Harems Simple etymology search on google indicates word Harem comes from Arabic ḥaram, ḥarīm, literally ‘prohibited', So if a Concubine is given equal treatment to wife then it's likely to be a Haram deal. So Harem concubines remained slaves only without freewill.

Besides word concubine is injustice by playing down experiences of vast majority of war captivated compulsively enslaved female slaves who suffered innumerable atrocities. Word 'Concubine' also does not cover status of female slaves un til they end in final buyer's hand.

Those who took war captives to final dealer every one sexually exploited them. Female slaves were not only exhibited naked but buyers used to literally freely manhandle them in the name of checking their body parts. Until a female captive reaches in hands of final buyer and he successfully impregnates her what is the status of female slave other than a Sex slave?

Why do we underplay the reality through our untruth. Do you use word Concubine for 'male slaves'? if not then why play down sexual exploitation of female slaves? How any sensible mind can undermine experiences of sexual exploitation of vast majiority and still be classified as scholar is incomprehensible.

For example 'Sigeh' in Nikah mut'ah is religiously remains equal wife. But when in any country government restrains polygamy and still a long term consensual relationship takes place is religiously a marriage but as per law of monogamous country can amount to be concubine relationship being illegal. Indirectly this will help understand difference between concubinage and sex slavery.

In the religion under discussion concubinage undermines equal rights of the wife so is illicit but same time Sexual slavery is licit since it denies equal rights to sexual slave.

Now whether to defend Sexual exploitation with apologetic and polemics or not and if yes by citing which rules is for every one's own conscience.

As of now I leave this discussion, let others take care.

By the way you seem to be good @ defining what is reliable source and researching so just pl. do help in expanding Draft:Slavery in Mecca and Medina that article deserves support from like of yours. Happy editing.

Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 17:20, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

• @Anachronist: you're right that sexual slavery has many forms: female concubines, forced prostitution, child sexual abuse (including child pornography), sexual slavery of men, rape (including wartime rape), sex trafficking etc. Muslims, who constitute 25% of the human race, have undoubtedly engaged in each of these practices. But I don't see reliable sources treating considering sexual slavery by Muslims as a coherent topic. Instead, WP:RS specifically refer to the institution that they call "concubinage", which only includes male masters entering into a polygynous relationship with their female slaves. WP:RS also treat specific examples of sexual slavery by Muslims (Bacha bazi, Rochdale child sex abuse ring, Kasur child sexual abuse scandal etc) but they don't make this out into a grand topic of "sexual slavery by Muslims".VR _talk 21:17, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

There is definitely not enough consensus for keeping the neutrality template. Removed. --Grufo (talk) 15:45, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

The template should remain until neutrality issues are resolved.VR _talk 15:48, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

As things stand now it is not proved that neutrality issues exist at all. That template has been inserted more than one year ago. Have you tried to address what you consider to be an issue during this year? --Grufo (talk) 15:50, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I have, through discussion, and others clearly have too. Just look at the discussions on this talk page, neutrality is always a factor in them.VR _talk 15:53, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

From your "list of neutrality issues" I read:

1. Page title – the issue (that you had raised) has finally been solved
2. Undue – From reading the discussion you don't explain what is undue, and when you do explain it your opinion does not find consensus
3. "Not enough POVs" – the page should have as few POVs as possible
4. Source cherrypicking – You have been quite active in inserting sources into the article (#1, #2, #3 – the list goes on, but I don't have time to through all your edits). Either this issue is solved, or it never existed, or you are the one who cherrypicks – by the way, I am pretty sure that you do cherrypick: your sources (or your source removals) tend often to go towards an apologetic view of the phenomenon.

In my opinion after more than one year of failing to find consensus for its presence that template must be removed ASAP. --Grufo (talk) 16:21, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

Page already exists on the same topic

There is already a page covering the same topic named Concubinage in Islam. In arabic the word, Suriyya refers to both sexual slavery as well as concubinage. Moreover, according to Islam, only a slave can be called a concubine and any other form of concubinage is prohibited. the page referred above is more racially and religiously neutral though lacks a few topics.

Regards,

Wikiedit01995 ^talk

That is not correct. This page title is neutral. Since Islam is not a race, we should not act as if it is. Wikipedia should be neutral, thus it must be possible to write about a negative subject within any religion, even if that may cause negative feelings.

The article Concubinage in Islam does not cover the subject of this article. While it is indeed true that concubines were sex slaves, not all slaves who were subjected to sexual abuse were concubines. Courtesans, musicians, singers, dancers and maidservants were all slaves, but they were not concubines and could only be covered very briefly in Concubinage in Islam.

Concubinage in Islam does not cover all subjects covered in this article, but we cannot transfer that information from this article to Concubinage in Islam, since that article must restrict itself to the subject of its title, which is a subcategory to this subject.

The article Sexual slavery in Islam is a main article about all forms of sexual slavery within Islam and the attidude toward it; the article Concubinage in Islam covers a subject within that phenomena. It is similar to "Opera" being a subcategory to "Music" or "Flower" and "Plants", and we should not erase a main category and replace it with a subcategory. --Aciram (talk) 15:40, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 9 October, 2021

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)

"Islamic views on concubinage"

I saw now that a new page "Islamic views on concubinage" has been created, as a sort of spin-off from this page. If we apply there the same policy that we applied here (and there are no reasons why we shouldn't) that page should be renamed to "Islamic views on sexual slavery". --Grufo (talk) 15:36, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Moved to Talk:Islamic views on concubinage § Requested move 14 October 2021

 – Grufo (talk) 23:38, 13 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 Wikipedia, 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? Wikipedia 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[2]).

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 [3], 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[4], including Iskandar's removals and my additions. In the edit summary, Mcphurphy indicated they want "long talk-page discussion" which sounds to me like Wikipedia: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 Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia 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)

Citation tag removdc

I have removed the citation tag as an article with 273 cites and no citation needed tags is a well-sourced article. Whatever other disagreements with tone, citations are not the issue. Slywriter (talk) 20:21, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

That tag was placed by Awesome Aasim so they can give insight as to why they placed it. From their edit summary it seems they are calling for some text to be cited to multiple sources.VR _talk 22:59, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

Which other tags exist that can be placed next to the specific statement. Tagging the entire article provides the false impression that the article contains largely uncited material, which is patently false. And given the size of the article is utterly useless to other editors. Slywriter (talk) 23:07, 20 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"[5]. 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 Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia, 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 [6], 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" [7] but the same editor then goes on to add that material to other related articles[8]. 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 [9]. 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.[10] It has also been cited by other scholars.[11] 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 -->[12] in 1 minute between your last edit to your user page -->[13] and edit to talk page of the article --> [14]? 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 Wikipedia 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[15]). 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 Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia 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 [16] 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,[4] 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)

Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia 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[17]. 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"[18].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

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 [for all time]", 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)

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[19], India[20] 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)

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. [1973 is a not intended as a suggested date.] 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 Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia 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[21], 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 ^talk 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 Wikipedia editor, had to write it? My question does not imply that you will have to write it, or even that Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia 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. Wikipedia has plenty of articles that are not findable in any source “as such”. I couldn't find much on Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia: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 ^talk 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 Wikipedia 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[22][23].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

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 Wikipedia 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)

• 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 Wikipedia 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 [RELIGION] views on [WHATEVER]; 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)

• 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)