Hi Baronnet! Thank you for your contribution in Urdu wikipedia. Unlike English, Images of holy personalities is not a style of Urdu language. You can write what ever you have to, with references. Hope you can understand. Samarqandi
Hi Samarqandi ! Could you explain me why ? I am afraid I do not understand very well. Deleting the portrait of Jesus has nothing to do with the Urdu language, this has to do with religious censorship resulting from one interpretation of Islam, which is not universal. For instance, see :
There are representations of Jesus, even in the Islamic world. There are no images of holy personalities in Muslim religious books, but there are images of holy personalities in books of other religions (such as in Christian books) and also in non-religious books of the Islamic world (for instance in poetry books). And Wikipedia is not a religious site, it is an encyclopedia. So I do not understand very well why there cannot be an image of Jesus on the page about him ?
Dear Baronnet, thank you for your message. I again want to say that please don’t think it a religious matter. Although the background of it may have a religious aspect but the reason of not having an image of any holy personality on Urdu wikipedia is absolutely consensus and on the respect of free will of the majority of Urdu wikipedia users, I am sure that 99.9 percent of the users of Urdu wikipedia are Urdu speakers (with urdu either as first or as second language) and I am also sure, more than 80 percent (at minimum) of that 99.9 percent users are from muslim background. In this situation it is moderately sufficient and reasonable to respect the discretion of the majority of users, and logic says that this is an ideal and international criteria to observe the feelings of the humanity and not the practice in other sense (contrary to majority) that becomes minority here on Urdu wikipedia. Even after this logical explanation if you think that the image of Jesus p.b.h. is an absolute necessity then please provide the reason of it, does an image is really required to explain the contents of the article? Why? Is there an image available of Jesus p.b.h in the world? Samarqandi.
Dear Samarqandi, thank you for your reply. First, you say that the censorship of images of holy personalities is the free will of the majority of Urdu Wikipedia users, but has the matter already been discussed ? On which discussion page? I would be keen to read the points of views. Second, there are mainy portraits of Jesus in the world, by the greatest artists : see commons:Category:Jesus in art. So yes there are many images available of Jesus (even coming from the Muslim world). But I guess that when you ask the question, you mean an image not made by hand ? Well, there are too, and they are known as en:Acheiropoieta (= not made by hand, in Greek). Probably the most famous is the en:Shroud of Turin. Last, I surely do not want to offend, and as long as Urdu users of Wikipedia are happy without an image of Jesus, well it is their choice, as long as it is reached by a true consensus, and not imposed on the majority by a minority. Even Europe had its iconoclastic times, though those periods of destruction were a disaster for our common cultural heritage. Mankind will always miss the artistic grace of the en:Buddhas of Bamiyan. Baronnet 07:45, 16 اکتوبر 2007 (UTC)
Dear Baronnet I am sorry to say that I can not refer you to a page about the consensus on holy images, as there is none. Now as you point for such an election, I am afraid that we will fail to do so because there are very few people on urdu wikipedia (and you can realize this by looking at this page of Recent changes). In fact this is such an understood thing that it need no formal consensus, because most of the urdu speaking people will give a negative response on holy images. But as you wish, we can make a consensus about it in the Community portal.
Baronnet you know better than me, the status of the Shroud of Turin among scientific community but we are not discussing that matter. I am doing my best to not turn this talk toward any religion, but just want to say a common fact about human psychology that the first step of deviation from the monotheism starts from the human nature of making an image of his or her loved one, either the loved one is a God, father, wife or a daughter etc. You can not find a real picture of any prophet, and making a conceptual one is after all an image of concept. Human concept or imagination has no limits, and its ability and approach, differ from person to person. Maybe you are the one who is very mature and strong in his mind and you can make your brain accept the image of a prophet just an image, but someone can try to find a relief looking at that image and during a hard time of his or her life s/he can even pray that image. Kids are kids, when a kid see a parent doing some kind of a religious process in front of an image his or her mind can create a God within that image, so, one almighty God somewhere unseen to human eye, one within the image, one as a form of a stone statue. What is the polytheism then? This is just the distortion of a divine fact. I think this is not the policy of wikipedia to distort the facts, or to take part in such a process.
In the last I want to thank you for providing links of such informative articles in your message, I have gone through all of them. As for your comparison of this situation with the reference of Iconoclasm and Europe, I think this is a very different matter here, we are talking about just the images of prophets, and you can see that most of the Science and History articles on Urdu wikipedia are full of beautiful images, where there is a need there is an image : - ) Samarqandi.
Bonjour M. Baronnet
Ça fait plaisir de voir d'autres utilisateurs francophones sur le wikipédia ourdou. Vous avez déjà fait pas mal de changements et d'additions, bon travail
--عثمان وقاص چوہان 17:11, 8 اپريل 2008 (UTC)
Merci. En effet, il y a déjà beaucoup d'articles sur Wikipédia en ourdou, mais j'ai été supris par le peu de liens entre Wikipédia en ourdou et les Wikipédias en d'autres langues. Ne parlant pas l'ourdou, mais lisant l'aphabet, j'ai essayé d'établir un certain nombre de connexions... Baronnet 17:23, 8 اپريل 2008 (UTC)
C'est parfait, merci de vos efforts. --عثمان وقاص چوہان 01:43, 24 اپريل 2008 (UTC)
Hi! Could you translate and add this article into your wonderful wikipedia? You can reach me here. Thanks. With Kind Regards --Warayupay 12:26, 19 جون 2009 (UTC)
Tacloban
Tacloban is a port city in the Philippines. It is approximately 360 miles southeast of Manila. It is the capital of the province of Leyte. It is also the regional center of Eastern Visayas.
