Talk:1949 Iranian Constituent Assembly election

A fact from 1949 Iranian Constituent Assembly election appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 22 August 2012 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows: Did you know... that the Shah of Iran used public sympathy resulting from a failed assassination attempt to call for a Constituent Assembly in 1949 to increase his royal power? A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2012/August.

This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Iran Low‑importance Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale. Law Low‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Law, an attempt at providing a comprehensive, standardised, pan-jurisdictional and up-to-date resource for the legal field and the subjects encompassed by it.LawWikipedia:WikiProject LawTemplate:WikiProject Lawlaw articles Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

I've nominated this article to be checked thoroughly for

What a petty move. This article is not yet done; there's more I will be adding, lots of details yet. You know as well as I that everything here is in the sources, and the sources are top-notch. I'm not misinterpreting them nor am I forking any kind of other content that is already covered. Binksternet (talk) 04:26, 18 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The language used seems POV to me (labeling those who opposed Shah as "fundamentalists" and "extremists" which is not encyclopedic language), and that is why I've asked for a POV check to be conducted by the expert editors, for the good of Wikipedia. What exactly is "petty" about that? Please don't take this personal,

WP:AGF and keep your insinuations to yourself. Thanks.Kurdo777 (talk) 04:40, 18 August 2012 (UTC)[reply

]

So who is the expert here? Who will come judge whether the article is written well enough to say that it represents fairly the sources? Who can interpret the Milani, Abrahamian, Daniel et al books better than I can? Those authors have written in English: I'm a native English speaker, quite literate in my mother tongue. It doesn't take a genius to understand the books and summarize their main points.

If you have specific points, bring them up here. Otherwise, there's nothing here requiring an expert. The tagging is too soon. I'm not done. More than that, the tagging is based on nothing solid. You've read these books so you know what I'm saying. Binksternet (talk) 05:06, 18 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I understand that your work is not finished. I can only judge what I see, and there were a few red flags. As for who the experts are, there are plenty of them on Wikipedia. I respectfully disagree that nobody can interpret the sources on these topics better than you. Kurdo777 (talk) 06:13, 18 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

A "few red flags" is somehow grounds for tagging the article before any other action? There are more collegial and collaborative options than that. Binksternet (talk) 08:06, 18 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Reasons not to tag an article with POV-check

• The article is being written by a veteran editor, skilled at writing neutral articles on difficult topics and getting them to GA and FA level; an editor who is clearly drawing from more than a dozen scholarly sources for facts and analysis.
• You have accused the editor of stalking you but suddenly you show up on a brand new article that he is writing. Who is stalking?
• You have not touched the article content in the places where you think there are problems.
• You have not used the talk page to note specific problems or suggest specific fixes.
• You have not tried to engage the editor on the talk page to see how amenable he is to collaboration.

Kurdo777, your shoot-first attitude on this tagging job is not worthy of me or worthy of you. Rather than tagging this article, work with me to make sure it is aligned with scholarly thought, to make sure it represents the sources accurately and in balance. Binksternet (talk) 08:06, 18 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Kurdo777 said there was POV language: "labeling those who opposed Shah as 'fundamentalists' and 'extremists' which is not encyclopedic language". I hold that both words can certainly be encyclopedic if they are accurate and well-founded. Binksternet (talk) 09:08, 18 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Fada'iyan-e Islam

• Ali Gheissari, professor of History at the University of San Diego, and Vali Nasr, professor of Middle Eastern and South Asian Affairs at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, wrote the book Democracy in Iran: History And the Quest for Liberty. On page 50 they wrote, "The first was Ayatollah Abol-Qasem Kashani (d. 1961) and the second was the Islamist fundamentalist organization Fadaiyan-e Islam (Devotees of Islam)." On page 51 they wrote that "The Fedaiyen were perhaps one of the first expressions of militant fundamentalism, which would dominate Moslem politics..."
• Martha Crenshaw, respected scholar from Stanford University, wrote the book Terrorism in Context. On page 562 she said the Fada'iyan "was dogmatic and promoted an austere form of fundamentalist Islam".
• Distinguished sociologist Saïd Amir Arjomand said of the Fada'iyan that they were "extremist activists".
• Mostafa Elm, author of the scholarly work Oil, Power, and Principle: Iran's Oil Nationalization and Its Aftermath, one that Abbas Milani described as "well-researched", said of the Fada'iyan-e Islam: "Members of this group were extremist fundamentalists who considered it right to assassinate anyone whom they considered highly irreligious." I think that settles the issue. Binksternet (talk) 09:08, 18 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ayatollah Abol-Ghasem Kashani

• Mary Ann Heiss, historian with Kent State University, wrote that Kashani was an extremist.
• Iranian diplomat Fereydoon Hoveyda wrote that Mosaddegh had a "difficult alliance with Ayatollah Kashani and other fundamentalists".
• James A. Bill, professor at the college of William & Mary, wrote the book, The Eagle and the Lion: The Tragedy of American-Iranian Relations. On page 94 he wrote that American intervention fomented extremism and anger in Iran, and that prominent examples of this anti-American extremism were "the Tudeh party on the left and Ayatollah Kashani and others on the right".
• Bahman Baktiari, a Middle East scholar who has been associated with the University of Maine and the University of Utah, wrote that "Kashani was also rumored to be the spiritual leader of a fundamentalist party formed by Navab Safavi in 1946. Called the Devotees of Islam, the group was responsible for several assassinations..."
• Martha Crenshaw continues about Kashani that he was "pragmatic" in his religious beliefs, that he was more ambitious for political power than religious. She says, "Although not a terrorist himself, Kashani was not above exploiting terrorists when it suited him." Ali Gheissari and Vali Nasr agree that Kashani was "pragmatic". Ervand Abrahamian, too, uses the word "pragmatic" to describe Kashani's religious and political beliefs.

In this case, we can see that there are scholars who said Kashani was extremist or fundamentalist but also ones who said he was pragmatic. I think the article will benefit from a fuller explanation of these views, introducing Kashani as a more complex character, and certainly using the word "pragmatic" before the other associations. Binksternet (talk) 09:08, 18 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There is a difference between POV tag and POV-check tag, and the latter is not a judgment call, but rather a request for further review by other expert editors, and should only be removed by a third-party editor who has thoroughly checked the article for neutrality. Binksternet's unilateral removal of the tag, is inappropriate to say the least. I'm not sure what Binksternet is exactly afraid other editors may find if a POV-check is done, and why he insists that he somehow has the final word on the interpretation of the sources on these topics, because he is "a native English speaker", which is really amusing considering that most of the sources on this subject are written by non-natives, and Binksternet's interest in this topics is fairly new. That said, for the time being, I will not restore the POV-check tag, to give Binksternet the courtesy to finish his work. But I reserve the right to request a POV-check, if the article's neutrality is not improved. Kurdo777 (talk) 14:34, 18 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Here's an idea: talk to a topic expert yourself and ask that person to look at the article and collaborate on it. The process does not have to be adversarial in the way that you first came here throwing out "WP:NPOV, WP:FORK, and WP:Weight" concerns without once having worked on it collaboratively. Binksternet (talk) 20:41, 18 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]