Well, What do You Have to Say For Yourself?
Wikipedia Islam Entry Is CriticizedPosted February 8th, 2008 by BibliofutureInternet
An article about the Prophet Muhammad in the English-language Wikipedia has become the subject of an online protest in the last few weeks because of its representations of Muhammad, taken from medieval manuscripts.In addition to numerous e-mail messages sent to Wikipedia.org, an online petition cites a prohibition in Islam on images of people.The petition has more than 80,000 “signatures,” though many who submitted them to ThePetitionSite.com, remained anonymous.
“We have been noticing a lot more similar sounding, similar looking e-mails beginning mid-January,” said Jay Walsh, a spokesman for the Wikimedia Foundation in San Francisco, which administers the various online encyclopedias in more than 250 languages.
I have a sense that this could be another example of Western concepts of free speach clashing with religious law. It would be easy for me to write this away as extremism on the part of those signing petitions.
Yet part of me, the part that has a deep respect for all faiths wishes to step in and be peace maker. The power of symbols and religous teachings is something that is sadly eclipsed by a society glutted on a swell of technology and information. The irony is that we have gotten to be less tollerant of foreign beliefs and traditions. It is a further irony that Americans since 9/11 have left most of their trust in the hands of politicians and journalists. We seem to lack an essential sense of knowing what is fear, and what is ignorance. We equate an abundance of information with quality. We assume today's editorialism is responisble, credible, and ethically motivated journalism because it can always flash the iconic imagery of 9/1. It is the oppression of freedom on our TV screens as a reminder.
It may seem I am off the beaten track. Yet if the story above was about a cartoon of Mary Magdalene kissing Christ or was an attack on the Pope I am certain that there would be an uproar in the press. I also think that it would be treated differently. There is a demonization currently occuring in the Western press of Musilm people. Most Americans are taught wrongly to fear Musilm people. What American's should fear is the loss of their constitutional rights. We should be more afraid of what is happening in Washington.
I am pretty sure that most people would like to stop being afraid. People would like to go on with matters other than the war in Iraq. Small matters like the economy, the national debt, and the upcoming presidential election. So why should we care about a wikipedia entry? Well, good question.
In of itself it has no direct impact on my life. But as an example of a lack of peer reviewed sources, it can be seen as more evidence of the trend of the Internet. With all new technologies there are responsibilities. Most hard core enthusiast in the virtual world equate the Internet with unlimited and open sourced structures in its matrix. Very little thought seems to enter into the dialog about the long term effects of its rubric on culture by enlarge. Educators and librarians (yes I think of them in separate terms-different can of worms, sorry) do seem to be interested in the impact of the Internet on culture, but it remains to be seen what the Internet has to say about its heritage. It seems to busy being the Internet to talk about itself.
Wiki has grown into a kind of corporate poster child of feckless scholarship. Its founder and guru Jimmy Wales defends it as having a charitable responsibility towards have nots of the world. There is a long history of that defense too. This defense offends a lot of professors and librarians, too. It offends publishers of encyclopedias and textbooks. It offends English teachers with red pens flaring away. It is the bounty and bane of the information scene. During my two years in library school I heard at least ten polemics for every sigh of relief from an undergrad when wiki was brought up in conversation.
The point is that it is here to stay. Learning to love it like an underachiever or juvenile class may not be the best choice. It may come a time when we must understand the cost and quality of free things at the cost of everything else that is cherished. Who will? Certainly not Mr. Wales. He seems to enjoy pissing off people. It’s a talent of his.
Is it not strange that by the time I post this the Internet has grown by nearly incalculable leaps, that it has changed the nature of information and exchange for billions? It has created an image of our culture, and others. But who is minding the images. And is anyone stopping to see it done right?
Any thoughts?
Here is a link to the story:
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