[WikiEN-l] JFW's and fundamentalist censorship

Wed Sep 8 00:26:43 UTC 2004

JFW writes:
> The Maimonides issue has spun completely out of control,
> like many other pages where RK decides to take over.

No one has taken over any article. The real problem, as I
encourage you to see for yourself, is that JFW has refused
to offer any ideas, yet becomes angry when POVs other than
his exist. I have repeatedly extended my hand in
friendship, and encourged him to offer points-of-view from
within his own community. We have communicated in a most
friendly fashion in private e-mail and on a number of Talk
pages. I always welcome his point of view.  I would love
for these articles to include many points of view. But what
can I do?  JFW refuses to include any POVs he claims exist
from within his own community, and it hurts him that
not-ultra-Orthodox POVs views exist.

All JFW has been able to do so far is to protest the very
existence of ideas that differ from his own.  That is not
Wikipedia NPOV policy.

I understand that an ultra-Orthodox Jew, JFW has only
rarely been exposed to critical-historical research of his
own faith. Still, it is a bit startling to see him dismiss
the writing of his fellow Orthodox Jew so blithely. Nothing
I added was original research; rather, I merely referred to
the views of mainstream scholars of the topic - many of
whom themselves are Orthodox Jews. Unfortunately, JFW has a
very select list of who he consideres authentic Orthodox
Jewish scholars and rabbis, and he is pained by the
citation of people not on his very short list.

To give an example of JFW's misunderstandings, the last
time I mentioned Orthodox Jewish points of view on the
topic of Artscroll books, he posted a panicky attack
accusing me of damaging Jewish unity.  What JFW fails to
understand is that Wikipedia is not a fundamentalist Jewish
religious publisher.  The goal of Wikipedia is NOT to
foster JFW's idea of "Jewish unity", Joe's idea of
"Christian Unity", or Sally's idea of "Islamic Unity".  Our
goal is academic honesty and integrity.

A long time ago we found that many of our Christian
fundamentalists, Jewish fundamentalist and Muslim
fundamentalists became angry when they were confronted with
historical-critical studies of their faiths. So?  They
learn to allow these other points of view to exist, or they
revert all the material which pains them, and then they
eventually get reprimanded. JFW should choose wisely.

JFw writes:
> He deposits a lot of research, most of which is only 
> of marginal relevance to the issue, 

Wow, that is dishonest. We were discussing a very specific
issue, and JFW and Jayjg repearedly asked me to provide
quotes and references. I complied; In response, JFW is now
attacking me for politely presenting the very quotes he
explicitly asked me for. I find it mean and disingenous for
someone to ask me to provide citations, yet then to
complain when I comply.  That's outrageous behaviour.

JFW writes:
> and causes long and heated debates on talk pages 
> whether these insertions are justified.

Yes, this occurs on every one of our pages about religion,
Jewish, Christian and Muslim. If you cannot handle this,
then this forum is not for you. I have seen a few Chrisitan
fundamentalists here become very angry when confronted with
sources that do not match thier religious dogma; the same
is true for Jewish fundamentalists such as you and Ezra
Wax. You both get angry when you see a historical-critical
POV.

This has all happened before. For example, see Ezra Wax's
old battles with Danny.  Ezra viewed Danny's contributions
as wrong, heretical and biased. In Ezra's view, unless the
article was acceptable to ultra-Orthodox Jews, it was not
"NPOV".  Unfortunately Ezra was wrong. As Danny pointed out
to him, NPOV does not mean that everyone will agree with
the article. It merely means that we say that "According to
group A, the following is true, while according to group B,
such-and-such is true".  Your problem is that you don't
want the article to mention points of view that you
consider heretical, and that's not cool.

JFW writes:
> Often, vital POVs are not represented, because 
> RK favours particular sources for his research 
> and (?conveniently) forgets to mention that these
> POVs exist. 

I am pained to see such deliberate falsehoods. Folks,
please check the talk pages for the articles in question.
You will see that I have repeatedly asked JFW to bring
forth other POVs, if he believes that they exist.  JFW
refuses to do so - and that is his fault, for which he can
blame no one else. Instead of bringing forth other POVs, he
tries to censor those that he finds heretical or
inconvient. He especially seems angry at the views of
Orthodox Jews who are not ultra-Orthodox.

JFw writes:
> I do not argue with Robert over pages that don't 
> have my interest, but we recently had a major flurry
> over [[Artscroll]], a Jewish publisher of religious 
> texts. Robert wanted to insert allegations expressed 
> on mailing lists concerning the historicity and
factuality
> of the content of many of these books. While some of 
> these allegations came from respectable sources, some 
> others were simple paranoid mumblings by mailinglist
contributors. 

This is shockingly dishonest. The issue, ironically, was
about the phenomenon of ultra-Orthodox Jews censoring facts
that they found inconvenient.

We are talking about an ultra-Orthodox Jewish publisher
faking photos in Soviet-style revisionism, censoring facts
about the life of religious scholars, etc.  The faked
photss and censored texts are well-established facts. The
phenomenon is openly discussed in the academic Jewish
community, and a significant amount of criticism towards
this censorship exists in the modern Orthodox community. 

The fact that JFW is at odds with his own fellow Orthodox
Jews over censorship and historical distortion is a private
matter; the fact that he misrepresents this subject in
order to effectively censor an article is richly ironic.

> I'm seriously wondering where this is heading. 

This is an ad homenim attack, attributing sinister
intentions to me, solely because I am openly discussing
subjects that you wish to keep hidden. For shame. 

We here on Wikipedia do not allow Christian, Jewish or
Muslim fundamentalists to restrict the topic or contents of
our articles, in order to meet their comfort levels.  As I
have always done, I continue to invite you to provide
quotes and references to back up any points-of-view that
you would like to include within any of our articles. Just
stop attacking other people for having the right to do the
same.

Robert (RK)

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