Talk:Arab Spring

Proposed rename - 2010–2011 Arab World protests

This was the initial title of the article prior to the outbreak of protests in Iran, after which it was broadly agreed that this article's title should no longer be limited to the Arab uprisings. However, the situation in Iran appears to have largely subsided, making its incidence merely part of a global repercussion that has influenced demonstrations in a broad range of countries including China, the United States, and several others. Thus far, the only protests that have resulted in historic consequences are those that have taken place in Arab countries. I feel that generalizing the situation to the entirety of the MENA region gives this article too broad of a scope. Thoughts? Master&Expert (Talk) 03:54, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

This has been proposed before, but the most recent discussion only had four participants, with two in favour of renaming and the other two opposed. This is not a consensus. I'm reposting the proposal for a broader audience. Master&Expert (Talk) 04:02, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Oppose - bigoted and feeds the stereotype that Arabs are the majority people in the Middle-East and North Africa. They are NOT. The Copts in Egypt, and the Jews in Tunisia were vital to the Revolutions there. This has nothing to do with the supra-identity 'Arab'.--Smart30 (talk) 10:11, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Actually Arab ARE the overwhelming majority in the Middle East and North Africa. The Copts and Tunisian Jews ARE Arabs, being an Arab is a national identity not an ethnicity.

From the article Arab world: 'The Arab League, a regional organization of countries intended to encompass the Arab world, defines an Arab as: "An Arab is a person whose language is Arabic, who lives in an Arabic-speaking country, and who is in sympathy with the aspirations of the Arabic-speaking peoples."'. Furthermore, the article defines the Arab world as a region of Arabic-speaking countries. The Arab 'supra-identity,' as you call it, is based on common language, not ethnicity or religion. DerekMBarnes (talk) 23:30, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Copts are a religion, not an ethnicity. They are Egyption citizens, of Arabic ethnicity and Coptic faith. But this discussion is not about majorities. It's about whether Iran counts as part of the revolutionary wave, or as an outside impact. If it's an outside impact, then the rest of the countries are all part of the Arab world, and the title should reflect that fact. If Iran is part of the revolutionary wave, than it's about Arab World + Iran, which we, and others, call "Middle East North Africa" - ArnoldPlaton (talk) 18:50, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Copts are the descendants of the Ancient Egyptians and some Greeks. They have nothing to do with their Arab neighbors. I assume it was merely an honest mistake on your behalf. --Smart30 (talk) 15:31, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

They have a lot to do with their Arab neighbours. Copts also speak Arabic, and some of their „arab neighbours” are also descendants of Ancient Egyptians, later Coptic Christians, but of ones who converted to Islam (Islamization of Egypt). I'll asume your mistakes are equally as honest - ArnoldPlaton (talk) 16:07, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

I made no mistake sir, the sole reason Copts adopted the Arabic tongue is due to the fact their tongues were cut out if they spoke Coptic. The conversion of a handful of Copts to Islam was entirely marginal, 99% of Egyptian Arabs show no genetic markers suggesting Ancient Egyptian descent. However these markers are unmistakable in the Coptic(native Egyptian) population.--Smart30 (talk) 16:29, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Completely unfounded claim and off the point. Copts' native language is Arabic, whether they were "forced" to speak it or not 1500 years ago is completely irrelevant.

Besides your word, what evidence do you have of your outlandish assertions? The exact genetic study would be nice. - ArnoldPlaton (talk) 17:01, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Interesting... genetic markers or not, this is how both the copts and the Egyptian arabs see the situation. One of my coptic friends describes himself as "Egyptian of the Pharoahs", and despite at one stage holding a key security-related government post, he was never granted a security clearance, purely because of his ethnicity. When performing his duties, he was always accompanied by an arab minder "to make sure I do the right thing". None of these minders had any expertise in the area, so how they were deciding what the "right thing" might be is an interesting conjecture. And the similarity between coptic and Greek facial features, and the contrast of both to arab ones, is striking. Andrewa (talk) 21:29, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Oppose-the current name is fine as it is, and imho, Qatar, Ertinea and Somalia (the latter is not Arabic) should be added--71.236.0.245 (talk) 04:18, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Qatar has only seen a failed coup, but I have not seen any source claiming link to the MENA protests, Somalia was discussed, and removed (see archives) and I don't know what Eritrea has to do with all of this. Please share some (WP:RS) links regarding these issues. - ArnoldPlaton (talk) 15:27, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Support - As stated in the last discussion, the unrest in Iran was in connection with prior political events within the country, and was too brief to be considered part of the ongoing movement. I acknowledge Iranian protesters were inspired by Tunisia, but I no longer believe Iran is directly related to these events, and it can be moved to the "Impact" article, voiding the reasons MENA is currently in use. DerekMBarnes (talk) 23:30, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Oppose: How many times are people going to argue about the same god damn point? We cant take out Iran or Western Sahara for example and seeing that none of them are arab states the rename cant be done. -- The Eguyptian Liberal (talk) 13:05, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

As far as I know, Western Sahara is an „arab state” in the sense that its inhabitants are mostly arabs, but on the other hand it is not part of the Arab League - ArnoldPlaton (talk) 15:27, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Support renaming, by DerekMBarnes's arguments. --Roentgenium111 (talk) 10:26, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Weak Support. Iran fizzled away pretty quick, and the internal factors (last year's post-election protests) seem to (slightly) outweigh the external ones (the „Tunisia effect”). The protests in the Arab countries seem to have emboldened them to come out again, but it was basically Green Revolution, part 2.

Also, Ive done a Google news count: Arab spring - ~2,120 results, Middle East North Africa protests - ~5,810 results, North Africa protests - ~6,890 results, Arab World protests - ~9,300 results, Middle east protests - ~16,400 results, Arab protests - ~14,600 results - ArnoldPlaton (talk) 15:27, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

You need to do that count with quotation marks around the words in the search box so they look for the terms specifically. Otherwise, you're going to get results that may not be accurate to what you're searching for. For example, Middle East protests may be just coming up with a bunch of articles that use the terms Middle East and protests in the same articles, but not in conjunction as a single term. Silverseren^C 15:29, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Slightly off-topic, can be moved to alternate section but relevant to the article name dispute, here is the revised Google News count according to Silver seren's suggestions: 1,210 results for "arab spring" [1]; 1 result for "middle east north africa protests" [2]; 2 results for "north africa protests" [3]; 17 results for "arab world protests" [4]; 105 results for "middle east protests" [5]; 43 results for "arab protests" [6]; 0 results for "greater middle east protests" [7]; 0 results for "tunisian revolutionary wave" [8]. Insofar as WP:COMMONNAME is concerned, this appears to be a strong argument against the current title, with Arab Spring coming out on top by over 1,000 results. This may not be a particularly refined method of analysis, however I believe it warrants a resurrection of the previous "Arab Spring" discussion, or at least an open discussion of all possible name changes based on popular usage or other elements of Wikipedia policy. I Oppose this name change on both the above grounds and the previous arguments concerning exclusion of non-Arab nations. Laika Talk: Laika 16:20, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose The protests in Iran were and are significant and have been stated explicitly by the opposition leaders there to be in response to Tunisia and Egypt. It was because of the MENA protests that they decided to start protesting again themselves, as expressed by their leaders specifically. Because of this, we have to include Iran in the list and this, thus, makes the name Arab world inappropriate for the article. Silverseren^C 15:29, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

• Very Strong Support The protests started in Tunisia, an Arab country, and has caused sweeping changes in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain and Syria, all Arab countries. The protests in the Arab World were very much influenced by the protests in Tunisia as Arab people in other Arab countries related themselves to Tunisians and watching the protests on Arab-speaking media helped ignite that feeling. That sort of connection was missing in the protests in Iran as Iran did have similar kinds of protests in the past before the Arab protests started and the recent Iranian protests were not as influenced by the Tunisian revolution as the rest of the Arab world protests. I propose separating this article into two: Arab world protests and Iranian protests.

• Strong Support these protests are refered to, everywhere as the Arab world protests or the ARab spring, that's just what this is, yet for some reason, the whole article has to be re-named to include 1 totally irrelevant student protest in Tehran, which happened a month ago and for which practically no-one showed up. It is ridiculous how that has played such a big role in this article, yet protests in other North-African countries like Uganda and Ivory Coast and Senegal and even Somalia (which is part of the Arab League) have been filtered out, the protests in Turkey being totally ignored, but this Iranian thing has to be given major attention. This motivated by political bias and does not fit in the neutrality policies of Wikipedia.Kermanshahi (talk) 21:12, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

• I...suppose it would be inappropriate of me to mention anything about your *cough* obvious userpage. But, being the main contributor to the 2011 Iranian protests article, I can tell you that you are dead wrong about what occurred during the protests. First off, there were more than five major protests over the past month, with most having more than 100,000 people attending. The protests have been just as large, if not larger, than the election protests that occurred in 2009. Silverseren^C 21:20, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

• Strong Support. The protests are in general, Arab protests (no need to go into definitions of Arab). Hence the terms Arab Spring and Arab Revolutions (the Arabic page was recently renamed to this). I am for 2010–2011 Arab World protests or even Arab Revolutions (increasingly being used in the media).--Aa2-2004 (talk) 08:44, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Strong Support As an Arab, it saddens me to see Iran lumped with us just because they are the only non-Arab country in the MENA region. There's something about these protests that is inherently Arab, and as mentioned above, they did spread to countries beyond Iran. I go on Facebook groups about these revolutions, and there you meet a mix of Arabs from all backgrounds whether it's about Tunisia or Egypt or Libya or Yemen or Syria or Bahrain or Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, Iranian protests date back to 2009 and have just been given new inspiration by their neighbours' revolts. It also appears that Iranian Arabs are also trying to take advantage of this wave and jump on the bandwagon, with as little success as Shiites in Saudi Arabia, if not less. At any rate, I may be being a little too nationalist here, but even the media is referring to this as an Arab phenomenon. UltimateDarkloid (talk) 23:04, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Support We can seperate Arab World Protests and Iranian Protests if this move is accepted. Kavas (talk) 14:39, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

• Comment perhaps this article should be named "MENA region protests"? USchick (talk) 15:48, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Infobox photo

A collage of photos from several countries would be good, not just Cairo.--93.137.14.197 (talk) 14:10, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Pictures from multiple countries would be good, not just Egypt, but not really a collage … Elium2 (talk) 14:48, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Iv'e done so with the pictures from articles, quality pictures are needed for a better collage.
  – HonorTheKing (talk) 15:18, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Which pictures? We need some form of a description (top left: Protesters in Tahrir Square. top right: …) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Elium2 (talk • contribs) 15:06, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Okay, I can't find the right two pictures anywhere … Maybe a collage of the protests from Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Syria? Elium2 (talk) 15:16, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

This map

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010%E2%80%932011_Middle_East_and_North_Africa_protests#Overview

I think it would be better to split the "Government Change" colour into two different colours. My reason for this is because Jordan and Oman didn't experience much unrest and violence before they changed the government. Syria and Yemen have experienced very violent unrest. 99.231.200.55 (talk) 11:51, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Here is my proposal for the colours:

1) War

2) Violent major rallies

3) Peaceful major rallies

4) Minor rallies

5) Minor occurrences and failed attempts to instigate (noticeable) unrest (bloggers, immolators)

I think government changes, sackings, resignations and overthrows should be pointed out separately through a marker of sorts. I think it notable to differentiate between deadly clashes in Bahrain, Syria and Egypt, where some protesters are armed, and deaths in protests like Saudi Arabia, Oman, Algeria, Iran and Iraq where the main cause was disproportionate security force. There are also the clashes between pro's and anti's in Jordan, while in Yemen the clashes have been between defecting soldiers and republican guards. UltimateDarkloid (talk) 09:57, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Iran status

The table says minor protests, but the map says major. The discrepancy needs to be resolved one way or the other. ZeLonewolf (talk) 16:48, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Djibouti has a similar discrepancy of presentation. --Khajidha (talk) 14:10, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Updates needed

Here are some sources:

• While the Saudi elite looks nervously abroad, a revolution is happening by The Guardian
• Arrested UAE blogger accused of possessing alcohol

Hope it helps -- The Egyptian Liberal (talk) 08:23, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! I included info from the Reuters article in the Other regional incident (UAE) section. The other article, concerning Saudi Arabia, might be of use in the 2011 Saudi Arabian protests article. - ArnoldPlaton (talk) 10:33, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Cool. Maybe someone can use the article about Saudi to update the page about the protests. I have added it to the talk page there. -- The Egyptian Liberal (talk) 18:47, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Is article netural?

I read the article and believe it violates WP:NPOV as it seems to portray the subject in a positive light. Will someone else check this out?KeeperOfTheInformation (talk) 20:44, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

self-immolations

where has the section gone. As a reader I want to see it again.--78.3.221.157 (talk) 10:18, 17 April 2011 (UTC)