Talk:History of concubinage in the Muslim world: Difference between revisions - Wikipedia

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A very misleading and deceptive name! It should be changed to Sexual Slavery! — Preceding [[Wikipedia:Signatures|unsigned]] comment added by [[Special:Contributions/103.255.6.100|103.255.6.100]] ([[User talk:103.255.6.100#top|talk]]) 09:51, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

* Looking at the well investigated [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Concubinage_in_Islam&diff=prev&oldid=968347255 VR's sources] I am incline to agree with HaEr48's points emphasizing the correct usage of "concubines". I think 'scholarly' works should make the core or of our decision, so the current title, i.e. "Concubinage in Islam", should be kept. --[[User:Mhhossein|Mhhossein]] [[User talk:Mhhossein|'''talk''']] 11:39, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

* Support '''concubinage'''. The practice is referred to overwhelmingly as "concubinage" in the context of Islamic history and traditional jurisprudence, as shown by Vice Regent. While "sexual slavery" may be more common in a modern context, though no one seems to have shown this definitively, the practice is extinct in the vast majority of Muslim societies. The historical/juristic term "concubinage" thus holds priority. Just to add to their list:

:* '''''Women, Family, and Gender in Islamic Law (Judith E. Tucker, Cambridge University Press, 2008)''''': 8 instances of "concubine" or "concubinage"; 0 of "sexual slave" or variants

:* '''''The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire (Leslie E. Pierce, Oxford University Press, 1993)''''': 300+ instances of "concubine" or "concubinage"; 0 of "sexual slave" or variants

:* '''''Women and Slavery in the Late Ottoman Empire (Madeleine C. Zilfi, Cambridge University Press, 2010):''''': 45 instances of "concubine" or "concubinage"; 0 of "sexual slave" or variants. Note that Zilfi explicitly focuses on the cruelties of concubinage in Ottoman society.

:This is in accordance with the common definition of "concubinage" as "(in polygamous societies) a woman who lives with a man but has lower status than his wife or wives". In fact, this definition is the ''primary'' definition of "concubine" in both Google and the [https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/concubine ''Cambridge English Dictionary''], and the use of "concubine" in this sense is easily found in non-Islamic contexts as well:

:* [https://books.google.com/books?id=0_QOCgAAQBAJ "A man named Zhou Lu (33) had purchased a concubine, Liu Shi (19 at the time of purchase)... But the concubine and the main wife did not get along, so after two years Zhou's mother ordered him to sell the concubine".]

:* [https://books.google.com/books?id=k0gVVh9jwF4C "Female palace slaves (in Dahomey, West Africa) included royal wives and concubines, some with positions of authority, and domestics".]

:* [https://books.google.com/books?id=lt_VDAAAQBAJ "In Babylonia a man normally chose a concubine for himself. A commercial letter concerned with buying many goods including a slave-girl expresses a wish to have proof of that woman's fertility... In this chapter we are concerned with slave-girls as concubines, not with situations where a married woman would go to live with another man and even have children by him".]

:This is par for the course in historical scholarship, and refraining from using "concubine" and "concubinage" because some readers might not be aware of the very widespread meaning of "a man's sexual partner of inferior social status to his wife" is like avoiding the use of the word "theory" in the [[evolution]] article or "myth" in the [[Genesis creation narrative]] article.

:The Google Scholar search results given by proponents of "sexual slavery" have not been formatted correctly, leading to any page with the words "sexual", "slavery", and "Islam" being included—even if the content in question were something as utterly unrelated like "[[List of placeholder names by language#Arabic|Fulan]], a medieval scholar of Islam who had been freed from slavery, wrote on the sexual implications of Islamic law".

:The proper formatting yields the expected results:

:* [https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=%22concubinage%22+%22islam%22&btnG= "concubinage" "Islam"] gives 7,640 results; [https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=%22sexual+slavery%22+%22islam%22&btnG= "sexual slavery" "Islam"] and [https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=%22sex+slavery%22+%22islam%22&btnG= "sex slavery" "Islam"] together combined give 5,200 results. The latter might include overlapping results, while the former does not.

:* [https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=%22concubine%22+%22islam%22&btnG= "concubine" "Islam"] gives 12,200 results; [https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=%22sexual+slave%22+%22islam%22&btnG= "sexual slave" "Islam"] and [https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=%22sex+slave%22+%22islam%22&btnG= "sex slave" "Islam"] together combined give 1,231 results. Same caveat with overlap.

There is no real dispute here in academia.--[[User:Karaeng Matoaya|Karaeng Matoaya]] ([[User talk:Karaeng Matoaya|talk]]) 16:31, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

=== No consensus ===