Talk:Wife selling/Archive 1

Archive 1

proposing new article instead of this disambiguator

I propose to convert this disambiguation page into an article with links to the articles this page currently references. The new article's content would be mostly other than English and Chinese customs, to minimize duplication. The article may be a stub. The intended source is Veiled and Silenced, by Alvin John Schmidt (1989), a secondary source by a sociologist. I plan to categorize into Category:Misogyny, a more precise categorization for this article than Category:Sexism, which I would otherwise apply; the source is explicitly supportive of such a categorization. I plan to link to any other suitable categories, as well. I plan to link the English and Chinese wife selling articles to this article. Nick Levinson (talk) 20:55, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Seems like a good idea. Malleus Fatuorum 21:12, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Done (allowing for changes with respect to the Chinese custom). Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 05:43, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

the Multiple template

What are the issues? The article was already templated as a stub and globalization is probably constrained by the consensus at Wife selling (English custom) (as I recall) for that custom to be in its own article, which led to Wife selling (Chinese custom) getting its own article. Additional sources for this article may be added at any time without the tagging here. Please indicate what the issues are. Nick Levinson (talk) 18:01, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Done (the template was deleted), by another editor (thank you). Nick Levinson (talk) 20:22, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

May I make a suggestion?

I think that trying to deal with wife selling in a general way has some merit, but the specifics are so different in different parts of the world. The Roman experience was very different from the Chinese, which was very different again from that of the English. What about structuring the article along the lines of a general historical introduction, followed by summary sections on the specific articles? A little like the style of the witchcraft article but hopefully better done? Malleus Fatuorum 20:50, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Not a bad idea, but I think there's not enough material yet to do something like that, I don't think we need separate articles on other nations as long as this article's length is not a problem, and I'd rather link to the English and Chinese customs articles without also summarizing them because with the summaries edits to the latter articles could require updates to this one, causing redundancy of work. Differences in characteristics between nations can be covered within one article. Nick Levinson (talk) 12:35, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

But that's not how summary articles work. Malleus Fatuorum 05:27, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

True, but I wasn't attempting a summary article, whereas editor Kaldari did, and it works. It will still have a maintenance problem; e.g., if I want to add content to Wikipedia, I usually think of the most likely article for it, not the several most likely articles, and that's how the content maintenance problem arises. Nick Levinson (talk) 05:45, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

No, it doesn't. The summary of, say wife selling in England, is very unlikely to need to be altered unless radically new information comes to light, which is highly unlikely. A summary article, which is what wife selling has to be if it's to be anything other than a disambiguation page, has to summarise. That's the reality. Malleus Fatuorum 05:50, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Summarizing is not the only approach to writing an article replacing a disambiguation page, unless one were to discredit two sources about all three nations not covered by the preexisting two articles, and I don't see a basis for discrediting them. There is likely a basis for adding sources showing disagreement, but not for not reporting what some reliable sources say. Those three nations provided content for the article other than summarization, and the article's links provided access to the information about the two nations that had articles. Both approaches have their place in Wikipedia. Nick Levinson (talk) 07:33, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

India

The single source used to prepare the India section isn't about "wife selling." It's about bride-buying and debt bondage. There is an incident of a man selling his wife (and then taking her back), but the second page of the report tells of a daughter sold by her parents, which is bride-buying. Since the male head of household can use his daughter as well as his wife to secure a loan, this is not "wife selling" as a clearly identifiable custom or practice perpetuated by a group that's based on the peculiar legal status of the woman as "wife." The section talks about the status of women and trafficking in general. And if the person is used as collateral for a loan, or to work off a loan, that's debt bondage. This material is surely apt for inclusion in other WP articles, but here it undermines the credibility of the topic as a whole. Cynwolfe (talk) 19:06, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

I selected for relevance from the CNN story. I quoted into the article: "Some farmers .... say because of years of little rain and bad harvests they are forced to give money lenders whatever they ask for. Sometimes that includes their wives." That describes the giving of their wives for the relief of debt, which is a manner of payment, and therefore they are exchanging their wives for the payment, and that is selling, not the giving of a gift or the selling of a limited service similar to when a temp agency in the U.S. lends an employee to work for someone else for a fee.

I did not use the sale of the daughter for the article. Citing a source does not incorporate by reference everything in that source, but only that which supports, contradicts, or qualifies the main text statement. That remains true even if the citation is to a specific page; often such a page has irrelevant content, but that does not vitiate the citation or the related main text. The daughter sale being in the CNN story does not contradict or qualify the wife sale in the same story. Since the Wikipedia article quotes the CNN story as I have here, what is relevant is whether the CNN story says what I quoted it as saying and whether the CNN story, anywhere in the story, contradicts or qualifies the quotation I presented. The daughter sale does neither.

That a husband-father may pledge the wife (wives if sales in polygynous societies occur), daughters, and sons as loan security and then may transfer any or all to the lender in order to pay off on the loan means that he is conducting wife sale, daughter sale, and/or son sale. The daughter and son sales are interesting but better suited for other article/s. The wife sale, whatever the motivation and whatever the form, is suitable for this article. At the same time, almost certainly motivations and forms should be described in the article to the extent known, comparing the various ways wife sale occurred around the world.

Selling oneself is qualitatively distinct from selling someone else who is obligated to the seller. The former is presumptively voluntary. The latter is much less so. The CNN story had nothing about wives being the farmers (many are) and selling their husbands (rare in England and, to my knowledge, not mentioned for elsewhere). The status of wife is thus different from the status of husband in how this selective selling of people plays out.

The CNN story did not say that farmers were pledging just any people. Family heads can ordinarily secure the obedience of at least some family members, but can only rarely secure it for just any people. Thus, the pledging of wife, daughter, and son is distinct from the pledging of just anyone. More narrowly, among adult women known to the male farmer, his wife has a distinct and special relationship to the farmer, a relationship that is distinct from that of mother-in-law or mother, who might not be so obedient, on average, if the farmer tried to deliver either of the latter to the lender for relief of arrears. And mother sale and mother-in-law sale, if occurring, are not in the article, nor should they be. The "peculiar legal status of the woman as 'wife ...'" is indeed key to what is described in the article.

Trafficking is not discussed in the article's India section. While I imagine the wealthy lenders do not live a mere twenty feet from the usual farmer, I don't know that and didn't discuss the distance from one home to the other or whether new surroundings are dangerously isolative of the transferred wife. Trafficking is an important subject and can be relevant to wife selling, but not in what is in the section now, so your critique on point is not of anything in that section.

The CNN story focused on wives and their families, starting with the title of the story, Farmers Sell Wives to Pay Debts in Rural India. I wouldn't want to argue (without proof) that the title was just accidental. I don't see synthesis in finding wife selling in the Indian states named. It may be that a Wikipedia article on debt bondage would cite the same story but use it differently, but that's a matter unrelated to its use in this article.

Nick Levinson (talk) 05:12, 20 October 2011 (UTC) (Corrected grammar with "on the": 05:30, 20 October 2011 (UTC))

If reports say some farmers pledge their wives, some their daughters, and some both, you can't just omit the daughters in the WP article in order to conclude that the practice is "wife selling." That's the very definition of synth. That some individuals sold or trafficked are wives does not generate "wife selling" as a distinct category of transaction, as it is with the English custom and (as recognized specifically in the Qing code) the Chinese practice. If the guy can say, "here, you like my daughter better, take her," then this is not a practice called "wife selling." You observe that "the pledging of wife, daughter, and son is distinct from the pledging of just anyone." Well, yes, because you can't pledge someone who in the eyes of the community doesn't in some sense "belong" to you. But if the male head of household has the option of pledging any member of his family, the practice can't be distinguished as "wife selling," which to be a meaningful category must be a sale that is contingent on the particular status of "wife." (A headline chosen by a copyeditor because it has a particular impact is hardly a reliable source.) Accuracy is all that's required for recognizing the horrors of various forms of human trafficking. Cynwolfe (talk) 12:14, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

It's not synthesis or inaccurate to discuss wife selling without child selling even if child selling also happens. It's a wife selling article and we can link from it (and probably should create an article on child selling or a redirect). We don't reduce the prostitution article's content to be only inside the labor article even though for many women it's mainly a way of making a living and sourceable as such. We may accept without digging up sourcing that a typical man has a relationship with a wife that is characteristically different from that with a daughter; for example, we may assume that most fathers' relationships with daughters do not include reproductive sex. I saw nothing about an option in India to supply a daughter instead of a wife if the debt-holder wanted the wife. The CNN story made clear that the debt-holder was not just requesting labor and leaving it to the farmer to find a laborer. The debt holder wanted the wife. Perhaps the farmer pledged the entire family; but we don't know that, whereas we know that the debt-holder wanted the wife. The choice was the debt-holder's, not the farmer's, and the debt-holder claimed the wife. Debt was to be relieved in exchange. That's wife selling and that's a practice different from the selling of other family members or of unrelated slaves. CNN focused on wives. None of us made that up. The headline is part of the source, the headline and the story go together and do not conflict, and CNN is a reliable source; the story with its headline is no less reliable because of its headline. Who wrote the headline does not matter (and I doubt that copyeditors usually write them).

To call all that synthesis would require removing almost every source on almost every subject from Wikipedia. E.g., in wife selling (English custom), a major source is Customs in Common, by E. P. Thompson, which also discusses rough music, and the book title does not include the words wife or sale; nonetheless, we would not argue that the book is not a reliable source even though it discusses more than wife selling. Indeed, the chapter on wife selling mentions husband selling (up to five cases), and we don't discredit the book because it does, or say that the book can only be used in a general overview on spouse selling or English history.

Nick Levinson (talk) 16:58, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

The fact that a book, or a report, talks about other things in addition to the topic at hand is not reason to exclude it as a source. But the topic has to be explicitly distinguished in the sources, and not represent an original argument that "wife selling" exists as a category separate from trafficking in women or family members. "Wife selling" as such has to depend on "wifeness," or it's the selling of a woman who only happens to be a wife. This is the point of logic on which we seem to disagree. The English custom is "wife selling" because circumstances of the sale were particular to the woman's status as a wife; the same circumstances did not apply to just any woman a man "possessed" in some sense, not to his daughters or sisters or mother. The Chinese practice is identifiable as "wife selling" because, for instance, there are laws that specifically address the selling of a wife, not women in general. There are ample sources for both these. I'm not seeing the same kind of sources labeling "wife selling" as a distinct practice in other cultures. Synth occurs when an editor draws or implies a conclusion not explicitly stated in the sources; if the sources clearly identified wife selling as a practice, lengthy and tortuous arguments wouldn't be required to interpret the evidence, which is where the originality lies: we should instead be amassing additional sources. In fact, I do read news coverage of the situation you're pointing to in India, but it remains unclear to me whether this can be distinguished from bride-buying or other trafficking for the purposes of this article. Wikipedia is not an outlet for journalism or a human-rights watch, and when we choose to contribute we consent to the limitations of our encyclopedic purpose. Cynwolfe (talk) 03:27, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

If it's really the case, as it seems to be, that wife selling as an identifiable custom only existed in England (and its colonies) and China then the contents of the China article perhaps ought to be included in the English article. My initial fear was that we'd see a proliferation of "wife selling in X" articles, but that now appears to be unlikely given the misunderstanding of "wife" apparent here. Malleus Fatuorum 04:08, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

The CNN article was clear that wifeness was being talked about, so no research originality or synthesis was employed. We agree on whether wifeness is essential to wife selling; wifeness was present. I presented the Talk argument because you didn't understand a source's relevance and I explained it Bride-buying and wife selling overlap but are not identical. In bride-buying, the female's pretransactional status need not be that of a wife, whereas already being a wife is required in wife selling (they overlap in that after either transaction the female is a wife but that's of limited relevance to this article). The CNN case is clearly not just any human trafficking. Journalism, as long as its a secondary source, is legitimate sourcing for Wikipedia and within Wikipedia's standards. Why we contribute to Wikipedia is of no moment to the legitimacy of the contribution as long as it meets Wikipedia's standards, including on sourcing. I agree that more sources would be helpful; perhaps you can link to the articles you're reading.

Wikipedia may cover wife selling and most other phenomena with respect to occurrence in nations around the world, because Wikipedia favors globalization of articles. Subsuming China within England would be difficult to justify even if wife selling occurred nowhere else. Either all loci should be in one article or England, per current consensus, can have its own article and the rest of the world will be included in another article.

Custom is not the only thing Wikipedia covers. Jaywalking and murder are subjects of articles and neither has the string "custom" in it.

No one misunderstood the word wife here. Please point to anything that even hints that anyone doesn't know the definition of the word.

I was editing on bride-buying during the time frame in which the two of you posted to this Talk topic, so I didn't see your replies until after I was done with that.

Nick Levinson (talk) 07:33, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Then I guess you may do as you please with your series of putative articles, so long as you don't mess with the English one. Which, let's be honest, puts the others to shame. Or at least it ought to if you were capable of feeling shamed. Malleus Fatuorum 07:47, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Nick, if I thought I had relevant sources I would produce them: at the second AfD, you'll recall that I started the talk page for sharing research on the topic, and reported in candor any isolated sources that mentioned "wife selling" other than the English or Chinese directly, even if only a sentence or two (which is all I found in books published by university presses). Journalism can be a legitimate source, but it can also be a primary source if we are assembling raw data (incidents, statistics, or what have you) in order to draw or imply our own conclusion. I don't see the CNN report (a single source) as drawing this conclusion. If "wife selling" because of a woman's legal, religious, or customary status as a wife can be distinguished from "bride-buying" or trafficking in women or other family members, surely there are human rights groups who will have pulled the data together. Examples of statements from the India section that raise doubts about synth or imprecision are:

• The farmers are forced to give money lenders whatever they ask for. Sometimes that includes their wives. That includes their wives; being a wife is not the defining category of the debt exchange. It's anything on which a value can be placed, including a wife. This is an example of women treated as an object of commerce, but there is no assertion that there's something inherent to being a wife, as distinguished from female in general, that enables the transaction.
• The region is prone to what it calls 'atrocities,' including the buying and selling of women. Again, women are trafficked; not just wives. In the English case, the practice was peculiar to wives; in the Chinese case, there is law that specifies "wife."
• Social workers say this isn't just about poverty, but also an indication of the low social status of women in poverty-stricken areas. Well, yes: again, this has to do with the status of women, a category which includes wives: the selling is not particular to the category of "wife."
• The frequency of such cases is unknown. That's the real giveaway: we even acknowledge that we can't establish a pattern of "wife selling" that is distinguishable from general trafficking in women.

Historically, in cultures that practiced widespread slavery and trafficking in concubines and prostitutes, marriage has been a social institution that privileges a woman acknowledged through law, religious ritual, or custom as a wife. Daughters have regularly been sold, traded, or "arranged" in marriages for whatever advantage to her father or family. That's why "wife selling" is a special case, and if one is a traditionalist, a particularly appalling overturn of social norms.

The new example from Hawaii seems sound, and in fact demonstrates what I just said: the selling of a wife was considered more surprising than other forms of trafficking in women. The paragraph as it stands in the article, however, isn't clear that it was a practice among the Japanese who came to the islands (p. 115ff.), and not a Hawaiian practice. Perhaps the subhead should be altered? Cynwolfe (talk) 16:50, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

I read the AfD2 talk at the time, as it was developing, and was glad for its contribution. I don't recall doing any editing because of it or needing to but I thought it had some interesting points. But, for example, I don't think I cited any source that depended on casting aspersions on a disliked group of people for its content cited for support.

What I used from the CNN report was in the CNN report. It's not a primary source. The reporter was not reporting on the reporter's personal experience of being party to a sale; the reporter was reporting on an event that was one level removed from the reporter, so the report is a secondary source. The CNN report uses the plural for the general case (e.g., "'wives'"); that it gives one example is not disqualifying. CNN made clear that it was not presenting a uniquely freakish case, but contextualizing it as part of a pattern of wife sales. Television journalism depends on brevity more than books do; books can offer more detail and statistics, but that we may not have a book (I don't read Hindi) or that a human rights organization hasn't reported it in English (advocacy organizations often have too few resources to be comprehensive) doesn't make the CNN report unreliable. It seems to be the best we have so far, and it's still within standards.

• The creditor specified a wife as payment and that shows that wifeness was a characteristic important to the creditor. This was not a case of "anything on which a value can be placed" when the creditor was more specific about what would satisfy the debt, namely, gaining the debtor's wife. It's not up to us to wonder if we could have convinced a creditor to take a plow instead and thereby discredit an otherwise-valid report.

• The sentence on atrocities and the passage on social workers' analysis that this is about poverty and social status of women is from CNN's context for the reported wife-selling; were either not CNN's, it might be synthesis, but both are CNN's and cited as such, thus not synthesis, and therefore includable here.

• The lack of frequency data does not mean "that we can't establish a pattern of 'wife selling' that is distinguishable from general trafficking in women." The two overlap but are qualitatively different; women include but are not limited to wives and trafficking often includes but even then is not limited to partnership transfers. Wife trafficking is a subset of female trafficking (counting only the part of wife selling that also qualifies as wife trafficking) but the notability for Wikipedia of wife selling was already established so the frequency of wife selling, though quantitatively unknown, is definitionally sufficient for reporting the subject of wife selling in Wikipedia.

Nick Levinson (talk) 06:39, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

I still disagree that a single CNN report is sufficient for us to decide that "wife selling" is a practice in India that is distinguishable from general trafficking in women. Cynwolfe (talk) 17:59, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

I have no objection to adding more on India. I've put it into my list of research to do. Note that wife selling in India does not have to meet the standard of notability; only the subject of the article has to be notable, and that's wife selling, which is. Also, generally, multiple sources are not required to support content, although there's no objection to citing a few. And I don't know how to read Hindi. But I'm open to adding sources. Nick Levinson (talk) 20:03, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Notability is not at issue. To constitute an entire section from scant and anecdotal information that can be verified only by a single source, and such a transient source as a news report, is more a matter of OR and undue weight. Cynwolfe (talk) 01:23, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

It's not OR and the reportage is relatively recent. To address whether the subsection gets undue weight, I moved the content (with the template) into another subsection, one on other cultures. If I add sourcing on India, I'll consider moving the content back into its own subsection. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:25, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Contemporary China

The new material added to the China section seems to be about bride-buying rather than wife selling. Kaldari (talk) 20:06, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Which is an indicator that this article is not really about wife selling at all. Malleus Fatuorum 00:15, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

@Kaldari Then remove what I wrote/added, I suppose I failed at understanding the definitions. SarahStierch (talk) 01:23, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Surely it's not that difficult? For a husband to sell a wife the couple must first have been married. How hard is that? Malleus Fatuorum 01:28, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Kaldari. The first paragraph seems fine; it indicates that the older tradition continued in "backward" regions. There are sufficient RS to support a section (or a separate article) on the Chinese practice. But in the rest of the contemporary section (and I'm not sure why China isn't China, since the first paragraph emphasizes continuity of custom), there seems to be a lack of distinction between general trafficking in women, bride-buying, and wife selling. For wife selling to be labeled as such, the woman sold has to be the wife of the man selling, and the sale has to be particular to her status as a wife: if he could choose to sell his daughter for exactly the same reasons and in exactly the same way, then the practice isn't "wife selling." It's some other deplorable practice. Cynwolfe (talk) 11:35, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Done. I moved content to the bride-buying article, with attribution to the contributing editors, whose work forms a useful addition there. Nick Levinson (talk) 06:24, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

I appreciate your efforts. Cynwolfe (talk) 12:09, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

propose to delete the Off-Topic template

I propose to delete the Off-Topic template as inapplicable to the content to which it refers, because that content is about wife-selling and, even without the tag, additional content can be added at any time. I'll wait a week for comment before the deletion. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:25, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

If you do, I'll put it back. That section is about the buying and selling of women, not specifically wives, which is why it was tagged. Malleus Fatuorum 16:34, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Every single paragraph and list item is about wives. There's also context. Please be specific about which list item or paragraph you believe doesn't speak about wives. Nick Levinson (talk) 18:09, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

Pretty much the majority of that tagged paragraph. For instance, what does "The Indian government in 1998 said in a report, according to CNN, "the region is prone to what it calls 'atrocities,' including the buying and selling of women" have to do with wife selling? Malleus Fatuorum 19:11, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

I agree that any content not explicitly related to the selling of already-married wives (rather than selling unmarried women to become wives) should be removed as outside the scope of the article. Kaldari (talk) 20:35, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

It's context (wives are among women and the paragraph talks repeatedly about wives), but if it should be in another article and linked to, that's fine. Besides the passage quoted by Malleus Fatuorum, what else is objected to? Nick Levinson (talk) 20:52, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

"When loans from wealthy men, as 'unofficial lenders', have high interest and the interest accumulates, 'lenders demand payment. Some farmers .... say because of years of little rain and bad harvests they are forced to give money lenders whatever they ask for. Sometimes that includes their wives.'" What has that got to do with selling a wife? Malleus Fatuorum 20:58, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

I had to log off the computer Saturday.

In economics, payment has multiple forms and cash and debt relief are two. If supplying one's wife in exchange for money is a sale, so is doing so in exchange for a thing (that being barter), debt assumption, or debt relief (that being for a payment paid before rather than simultaneously with the wife transfer). If one is a sale, so are all of them, because sales are not limited to cash or defined by timing but are defined by fundaments, such as intent. E. P. Thompson's work is essentially in agreement, since he included sales for alcohol, i.e., barter, and the count of them belongs in the English article even absent cash. However, I'll consider rephrasing the passage for clarity, perhaps by adding a parenthetical comment to the effect that debt relief is a form of payment that is part of a sale.

I don't think there's much resembling bride-buying content left in the article. I think most of it came out months ago. A hatnote at the top of the article addresses that. What's left is contextual, e.g., that bride price is distinguished from wife sale, and context is common in Wikipedia articles because it makes them easier to understand.

What else do you object to?

Nick Levinson (talk) 17:18, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Is it your argument that lenders in India ask exclusively for wives, rather than daughters for instance? Your economics argument falls flat in any case I think, as in the cases recounted by Thompson the payment (whether in money or alcohol) was an essential part of the transaction, whereas in the case of lenders demanding wives that's a punishment for default on repayments due on a loan. Malleus Fatuorum 18:21, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Other relatives would be irrelevant. What matters is that sometimes they ask for wives. Maybe at some other time they ask for daughters, but that's typically irrelevant to wife sale. The same is true and documented for the English custom. If providing a wife suffices to relieve debt then wife sale occurred, because if it did not suffice in the creditor's view the wife would not have been accepted in exchange for debt relief by the creditor.

Punishment is separate. It may be noncompensatory, as when it results in killing or imprisoning the debtor, or it may include restitution. What we have here is the inability to pay a debt one way and so another way is demanded and fulfilled. It may be that the sale of the wife was an alternative to payment of cash or crops, but being an alternative makes it no less a sale.

The article discusses a demand for payment. That is not punishment.

I'll probably be back online in a day or two.

Nick Levinson (talk) 18:40, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

The ineluctable fact is that the whole thing is irrelevant to wife selling, as it is not a sale and it is not the intention of the husband when initiating the transaction to sell his wife, or of the wife's to be sold. Malleus Fatuorum 19:10, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Calling your view ineluctable is a way of terminating discussion and refusing to arrive at a solution compatible with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. The tag was up for months with silence most of the time and, believing matters resolved, I opened this discussion.

Regarding India, the intention evidently changed and that kind of change is accepted in both economics and U.S. law, and probably in law in most capitalist nations, including in India were wife-selling lawful. It became a sale upon change. What the agreement was at initiation is not determinative of the later state of the agreement. Deals can be amended usually whenever the parties so desire. A common case is when people change a rental to a sale based partly or wholly on payments already made. It's a sale.

The wife's intention is irrelevant. The intentions that do matter are those of seller and buyer. The wife is neither.

I think a mistake you may have been making for some time was to believe that English ritualized wife selling is the only wife selling that existed. I think you have been coming to understand that some other forms are also wife selling. In fact, all selling of wives is wife selling and is reportable as such.

A reliable source reported the sale. Anyone may disagree with the source and choose not to report it, but others of us may rely on it and report it and thereby enhance the article.

I do agree the phrasing should be clarified for the economics grounding. Please feel free to suggest a rephrasing. I will see what I come up with.

Are the two points (buying/selling of women as atrocity and debt relief) thus the only reasons you have for wanting the Off-Topic tag? If there's anything else, please point to it.

Nick Levinson (talk) 14:41, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

The mistake you've been making is your stubborn belief that I'm mistaken. You are confusing practices such as trafficking in women with wife selling, and have been right from the start. Malleus Fatuorum 15:39, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

I've substantially edited the section in question to address the concerns raised. Let me know if this looks acceptable. Kaldari (talk) 20:51, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm much happier with that, thanks Kaldari. Malleus Fatuorum 21:16, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Acceptable and it saves me the effort. Thanks to both. Thank you, also, Malleus Fatuorum, for acknowledging that I was right from the start and thus for acknowledging that I was not confusing the topics. When we disagree, it apparently has partly to do who relies on which sources on which areas of scholarship. I plan to get to the remaining edit shortly (it's a computer session time issue) and that should conclude the matter of the tag. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:37, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't know where you got the idea from that I was acknowledging you were right, but no matter. Anyway, I'm quite happy for the tag to be gone now. Malleus Fatuorum 16:55, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

I completed the move of the atrocity content by adding it (with minor editing) to the slavery in India article, as likely the closest fit. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:48, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

E. P. Thomson, Customs in Common, on possibly worldwide wife-selling to today

This ambivalent statement appears in Customs in Common, by E. P. Thompson (1993), at p. 408: "The sale or exchange of a wife, for sexual or domestic services, appears to have taken place, on occasion, in most places and at most times. It may be only an aberrant transaction, with or without a pretended contractual basis — it is recorded sometimes today." The ambivalence is in whether this is applicable worldwide or only to England or Britain. The book is about the smaller geography but wife-selling was last reported there in 1913, not "today". On its face, this pair of sentences appears to me to be intended as having worldwide applicability. If worldwide, it belongs in the Wife selling article. If England- or Britain-only, it belongs in the Wife selling (English custom) article. I have not resolved this, so I have not put it anywhere at this time. Advice is welcome. (Full citation: Thompson, Edward Palmer, Customs in Common (N.Y.: New Press, 1st American ed. 1993 (ISBN 1-56584-074-7)), p. 408 (title Customs in Common: Studies in Traditional Popular Culture per p. [iv] (copyright p.) (Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data) & cover I) (author historian & social critic, per cover IV).) Nick Levinson (talk) 17:30, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Since other sourcing indicates that wife sale is modern or very recent, I took Thompson's statement as meant as wordwide, as facially indicated, and used it in the article's lead. Nick Levinson (talk) 19:50, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

propose to restore a feminism template

I propose to re-add the Feminism Sidebar template. I recently added it and it was deleted with the Edit Summary "rm, not needed". Maybe not, but it is useful. Selling of a spouse determined by gender is a feminist issue, both for recognition in history and as a pracice that still goes on in some places around the world. It is likely that visitors to the article would find other single-gender articles and feminist articles of interest, more so than would visitors to most other topics in Wikipedia. It's true that some other feminist topics would lead to even more interest in feminist links, but wife selling is within the purview of feminist concerns. The article is also within the scope of the Feminism and Women's History WikiProjects. Is there any objection to my restoring the sidebar template? Nick Levinson (talk) 20:01, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I would object to that. In addition to being unnecessary and aesthetically undesirable, it is overly broad and only tangentially relevant. Nikkimaria (talk) 20:14, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes. It was removed twice already, if I am not mistaken? It's more of a family/relationship topic than a revolutionary movement topic. In ten years of being a feminist, I've never heard this particular practice mentioned as a concern. Bride-trafficking, especially involving kidnapping, or forced-marriage of child brides are ongoing feminist concerns, discussed actively and often. Taking part in a this particular legal and cultural tradition doesn't seem to be a feminist topic, historically or currently, although patriarchy definitely applies. This article is relevant to marriage and relationship practices from a historical perspective and templates along those lines would be more fitting than feminism. Cheers! :) Ongepotchket (talk) 20:51, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Okay; I'll leave it out. I added the other type you suggested. In response: I thought I had put it in but didn't see it coming or going in the article history and it wasn't in several revisions I checked, so then I thought I had just forgotten to add it. I think I only learned of wife selling from Wikipedia, but that's because feminist discourse centers on modern local/national issues that are otherwise little addressed, i.e., that are priorities, not issues that are mostly historical and in other nations or that, if mostly wrongful, are already enforced against. But feminist literature does occasionally discuss it and in feminist terms, as I found by researching for Wikipedia for wife selling (English custom). The directionality is the other way, in that the template is not for readers interested primarily in the range of feminism (the feminism article is for that purpose), but primarily for readers interested in single-gender spouse selling who then might want to know what's related to that, thus the template widens readers' reach. If aesthetics were the only issue, it's defensible but regardless there's a corresponding template with a different look. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 17:43, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

I propose to add the Feminism template near the bottom because there is now sourced content specific to feminism and wife sale in the article. As there was an objection to the aesthetics of the Feminism Sidebar, I propose to use the other template instead. A previous concern approximately that people reading feminism-related articles would not likely want to read an article on wife sale has perhaps been answered in a post above, in that the template supports research in the outbound direction, for readers of this article who might want to pursue related interests in feminism. I'll wait a week, in case anyone wants to comment. Nick Levinson (talk) 19:58, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Done. As an additional point, a template pointing to articles on discrimination has been part of this article for a while without objection and wife sale is discriminatory against women because they're women, thus feminism is relevant. Nick Levinson (talk) 22:28, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Chinese wife sales forbidden except to alleviate poverty?

An interesting historical angle is uncovered regarding 14th-century China. Wife selling motivated by poverty was reported. This was followed by a legal ban on wife selling motivated by adultery, betrayal, or no longer getting along. This implies that wife selling motivated by poverty was still lawful. If anyone knows of a source that would elucidate or disprove this distinction, please post it. Nick Levinson (talk) 20:09, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

inflecting helped research, though I forgot to include barter, trade, etc.

Much more material was found by Boolean-searching a database with more inflections. The key was in the inflections. I'm not sure I preserved what I tried, but this is a clue from my notes:

selling/sold (their) wives his/the/a wife

i.e., I think,

• selling wives
• sold wives
• selling their wives
• sold their wives
• selling his wife
• sold his wife
• selling the wife
• sold the wife
• selling a wife
• sold a wife

Since I largely skipped results that appeared to be about England and colonies or China, on the assumption that they were already researched by other editors, this technique might be useful for those two nations, especially England and colonies, which, it now appears, may not have been adequately researched by other editors.

But I missed barter, trade, and so on, or at least I may have. Finding one without searching for the word means I probably missed other cases. While "trade", "trading", etc. would likely have gotten wife-exchange reports, they may have gotten sale nonexchange reports as well.

Nick Levinson (talk) 20:23, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

I did some research specifically related to the United Kingdom and found some useful articles, albeit all for elsewhere. I posted the results into the article. In JStor, I did this Boolean search:

("sell his wife" OR "selling his wife" OR "sold his wife") AND (England OR Scotland OR Wales OR Ireland OR Britain)

Then since, in most cases, each result indicated a whole bunch of pages that had at least one of the terms, I repeated the part of the search string before the Boolean AND but limited to searching within the current article.

I also did the full string but varying "his wife" in each substring to "a wife", "the wife", and "their wives".

A further search that would have been potentially helpful, especially among older sources, would have been for United Kingdom, Eire, Welsh, Scot, Scotch, Scottish, English, Irish, Brit, British, Briton, and other related locales and peoples. Howeer, they would have required a complex of separate searches, since JStor, like Google, seems to limit the number of terms that may be entered into a single search.

I did not try barter, trade, etc., although at least one article was partly about barter.

Nick Levinson (talk) 22:22, 10 November 2012 (UTC) (Clarified re UK/non-UK: 00:20, 11 November 2012 (UTC))

within nondomestic slavery

Slavery (nondomestic, as on plantations) is probably not adequately covered, although I made a start at it. While selling of slaves who just happen to be wives is not especially relevant here, when being a wife is sourceably important to a sale or nonsale then it is reportable in this article. I found some sourcing but there's probably more I missed, partly because of my own omission. Books are probably rich on topic. Feel free to add. Nick Levinson (talk) 20:30, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

China: minor addition on court case considered

This seemed too minor to add without further research into the source it cites, but might be interesting to research and then add: "Before it [the "Civil Code"] was produced the republican courts were still bound by rules springing from the old order and might be forced to give recognition to practises likely to raise eyebrows in the world at large. In 1919, for example, in a case arising from a man's selling his wife, the Supreme Court ruled that the 'purchase of a woman for the explicit purpose of begetting children is justifiable and not invalid.'⁵" "⁵ 'Chinese Supreme Court Cases,' The China Law Review (English Side), Shanghai, Vol. I, No. 3, October 1922, p. 138." <ref>[http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2752626.pdf Freedman, Maurice, ''The Family in China, Past and Present'', in ''Pacific Affairs'', vol. 34, no. 4 (Winter, 1961–1962)], as accessed June 8, 2012, 1:00 p.m. (time zone unspecified), p. 330 & n. 5 (article dated September, 1961) (author Freedman of London).</ref> Nick Levinson (talk) 20:40, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Kirkuk tablets and meaning

The following passage seems relevant but needs more meaningful context if it is to be added to the article: "Given: A man sold his wife, son and daughter for money, or if as payment for debt he gave (them)." This is a translation or transliteration of a Kirkuk tablet, I think Babylonian, as provided in an article from 1929–1930. It appears it could illuminate wife sale in a society possibly not yet mentioned in the article. If anyone can assist with context, please do. Source: <ref>[http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3768492.pdf Kramer, Samuel N., ''The Verb in the Kirkuk Tablets'', in ''The Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research'', vol. 11 (1929–1930)], as accessed June 13, 2012, 11:04 a.m. (time zone unspecified), p. 91 n. 176 (author Kramer of Univ. of Penna.) (in ''JStor'' (database) (subscription may be required)).</ref> Nick Levinson (talk) 20:46, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Khula

The concept of khula, where a woman seeks divorce and in some cases returns her husband's property to him, is not "wife-selling". The terms of khula vary, in some cases the wife can agree to forgo alimony, in other cases she returns the mahr her husband gave her, either in whole or in part. But the husband can't demand more than that which he gave her.[1] This is not wife-selling, this is divorce.Bless sins (talk) 19:34, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that paragraph is a mess. It is rather misleading as it is implying that all forms of female-initiated divorce in Islam involve paying money to the husband, which is certainly not true. It's also confusing as it lists male-initiated forms without making any distinction, such as al-talaq. The male and female-initiated forms are not equivalent. And the last sentence makes no sense at all:

• "...no divorce will occur... 'when the husband intends a divorce'." Huh?
• "...no divorce will occur... if the divorce is 'in the words of a divorce'" Double huh?

This is a combination of poor translation and choice of quotes. What it's trying to say is that in some schools, divorces which consist only of the husband announcing the divorce are not valid (i.e. other steps are necessary). Regardless, this type of divorce, talaq, is not related to khula or other female-intiated forms, and thus doesn't have any possible relationship to wife selling. More to the point, I don't see the idea of a woman buying her divorce as being equivalent to "wife selling" in general. One could argue that in states without no-fault divorce, women in the U.S. must also "buy their divorce" (at a much higher price than in Pakistan). Kaldari (talk) 23:06, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

I propose moving that entire section out of this article and into Divorce (Islamic). Kaldari (talk) 23:23, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

I will try to clarify (when I'm back online) that not all forms of Muslim divorce are wife-selling.

No objection rests to copying and rewriting for the Islamic divorce article; I took a look there a while back and decided that that project was too much for me. But moving (implying removal from this article) would be an error, as this article covers all forms of wife sale, including that for divorce.

Being a divorce does not make an event not a wife sale. Some wife sales are for divorce; some are not; some divorces are by wife sale; some are not.

The 2 unclear passages reflect the sourcing. They are unclear and it's possible to interpret them (intent is important in many contexts besides divorce) but it's better to quote the sourcing as a necessary qualification of other text.

Who initiates may make a difference in general but need not make a difference for the particular point about whether the divorce is a sale of the wife. The same applies to whether other steps are also necessary.

The section covers 5 schools of thought within Islam. Not all 5 agree with each other. I reflected the sourcing about the 5.

The quotations and paraphrases accurately reflect the sources. Other sources may say something contradictory but the ones I cited did not. If another source explicitly declaring what's written about in this section as not constituting wife sale is available, please cite it. I'd be happy to reflect a debate on whether this form of divorce is wife sale, but we need a source for that, whereas the view that it is wife sale is sourced. The source offered above that's from qibla.com does not address sale per se.

I haven't seen sourcing on no-fault divorce as wife sale.

I'll work on clarification over the next few days.

Nick Levinson (talk) 18:32, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

The main problem is that the section relies too much on cherry-picked quotes without providing a clear picture of what Islamic divorce actually entails (which I'll admit is rather complicated). It seems to include any quotes about Islamic divorce that include the words "sell" or "purchase" without regard to presenting a balanced picture. Honestly, in it's current state the section is rather misleading and inadvertently POV. I'll be the first to admit that Islam is heavily steeped in sexism and patriarchy, but for any criticism of it to be effective it must also be accurate. Kaldari (talk) 18:50, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Quotations and authority for paraphrases were picked for relevance, not favorability to a conclusion, which is what I assume is meant by cherry-picking. In other words, they were not cherry-picked. Relevance is precisely how sources should be picked. There's no attempt to describe Muslim divorce in full or representatively, and needn't be; instead, the attempt is to describe wife sale in full or representatively. Some Muslim divorce fits that definition and therefore belongs in the article. That Muslim divorce which does not fit the definition does not belong in this article, although it probably belongs in the Divorce (Islamic) article. Nor is the discussion in the article about people who divorced by sale regardless of their religion and who happened to be Muslim; rather, ths is about Muslim approval within the framework of Islam of divorce by this means, and thus Islam warranted a separate subsection in this article.

It's NPOV, because it reflects the sources on wife sale in Islam. If a source is available that is to the effect that the form of Muslim divorce described in this article as wife sale is not such, I'm happy to add it alongside the sources that support characterizing it as wife sale, but I haven't seen such a not-a-sale source yet.

It is accurate, as reflecting sources. If all the suorces are wrong, that's beyond our reach.

This is not a comprehensive critique of Muslim divorce or of any other form of divorce. It's only about wife sale, including in divorce and Muslim divorce. A general critque would go into another article, not this one.

Because this article is about wife sale while the subject of Muslim divorce is encompassed by another article (with the two articles overlapping), I've cross-referenced the Divorce (Islamic) article in a hatnote beginning the subsection on Islam in this article and I plan to cross-reference from that article to this one as well.

The amount payable being limited is discussed in the article where it says "[t]he schools agree it is ,,, possibly with limits on the amount of the consideration" but "[t]he amount of the consideration ... need not be related to the amount of a dowry".

I plan to look for a source that clarifies that some divorces do not require provision of money, a good, or service, regardless of which spouse initiates the divorce, as that's my understanding of Islam and most or all major religions. I think I know of such a source.

Nick Levinson (talk) 16:16, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Looking at the examples of wife-selling in England, China, Japan, India, the wife is sold to a third party. Khula does not involve any third party. It is rather the termination of the marital contract (nikah) between the husband and wife, where the wife (sometimes) returns the mahr.

I have two objections as to the sourcing. Firstly, the sources do not compare khula to other forms of wife-selling. In fact, can you provide a quote where the author concludes that khula constitutes a form of wife selling comparable to that found in other cultures?

Second is the reliability of Bakhtiar.(See Laleh_Bakhtiar#Criticism) Bless sins (talk) 16:26, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

In fact, can Nick Levinson provide his rationale as to why khula constitutes wife-selling? This rationale isn't at all clear from the article.Bless sins (talk) 16:31, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

The distinction is not necessary, as all of these are still forms of wife sale, albeit to different parties (herself or others). That the marital contract is terminated does not conflict with the act also being a sale of the wife. That one source does not compare what it describes to what other sources describe is not necessary; we can use multiple sources for an article and usually do, throughout Wikipedia. That Arabic is not the source author's native languae is not important to reliability and that she is (if true) a woman-friendly author is irrelevant; the criticisms are not about the source's accuracy. The rationale for describing the form of divorce as wife sale is stated in the article. If anyone can provide a source saying that khula is not wife sale, I'm happy to add it. Nick Levinson (talk) 18:06, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

In the subsubsection Islam, I also cited an article by Harald Motzki that said this (I think this is unnecessarily much for an article on wife sale but I'm quoting it here to provide context (diacritical marks omitted or approximated)): "In the Qur'an, four types of divorce can be distinguished: two direct forms of divorce, talaq and talaq by iftida' , and two procedures resulting in divorce, ila' (or zihar) and li'an.... The connection between bridewealth and divorce shows how it is possible for an unhappily married woman to receive a divorce from a husband who is not prepared to let her go generously: bargaining for it. The Qur'an (Q 2:229) suggests this possibility through the term iftadat, 'to ransom herself.'" (Page 279, col. 2, to p. 280, col. 1.)

On reliability, to explain better, since I was in a rush on Wednesday:

Criticizing a source author as unreliable because her native language is not Arabic, even for an Arabic subject, would require as a principle that translations are not valid for scholarship to be reported in Wikipedia. As that would include translations by native Arabic speakers into English for Wikipedia's readers, that principle would exclude vast quantities of research from Wikipedia and from most canons of authoritative scholarship. A native-language-only rule may be fine for the Arabic Wikipedia or for other websites and publishers but is not established for the English Wikipedia, although you may propose it, if you wish, at a policy talk page.

That an author is woman-friendly is not a reliability issue, especially since it's a vague charge. Many are Muslims and perhaps most are affected by Islam, so woman-friendliness might help a source contribute to Wikipedia's neutrality.

That a bookstore refuses her books is not enough to make her unreliable as a source for Wikipedia.

Merely that she has been criticized, if the grounds are not enough, is not in itself disqualifying or most well-known sources could not be cited in Wikipedia, since almost all well-known sources have been criticized somewhere for something. Reliability for Wikipedia's purposes is more specific and her work cited in this article meets that standard.

Wikipedia does report multiple sides of an issue and I try to do that. I do not elide what I simply disagree with. From what I know, not all forms of Muslim divorce require payment, and I've clarified the article in that direction, to contextualize the form of divorce that does require payment.

I understand the view on this talk page that divorce with payment is not wife sale. That view is reportable in Wikipedia but not without a source, given that a source already supports reporting as wife sale. I don't have a source opposing the characterization as wife sale. If anyone finds such a source, even one that just marginally meets Wikipedia's criteria, it'll be good to add that viewpoint for balance.

It is also possible that there is criticism that says that it is wife sale but that divorce should not apply that form precisely because it is wife sale, and it would be good to add such a critique, too, since none of the three authors cited on Muslim divorce in this Wikipedia article criticize it. However, for that criticism, too, we'd need a source.

Nick Levinson (talk) 15:57, 15 November 2012 (UTC) (Deleted excess sig: 16:02, 15 November 2012 (UTC))

Regardless of the reliability of the sources, the section still suffers from the following problems:

• WP:SYNTH. Nothing in the section documents any source comparing Islamic divorce to "wife selling". Many Islamic divorces actually involve the husband being required to pay the wife (as a form of alimony or child support), but we don't equate that with 'husband selling'.
• A large percentage of the section is off topic. Much of it is discussing minute differences in Islamic divorce law that have nothing to do with money, for example, "The male must be a 'sane adult' except that the Hanbalis also allow a 'discerning' boy to be the agreeing husband." A reader who is actually interested in the subject of wife selling would never make it through reading this section.
• The most important question isn't clearly answered: Which divorce type in which school(s) condone financial payment from the wife as a means of divorce? It says "According to Harald Motzki in 2003, of 4 forms of divorce permitted by the Qurʾān, one is divorce by the wife 'bargaining for it' from her husband." Great, which one is it? If the answer is 'khula', this is quite misleading, as khula doesn't necessarily include any bargaining whatsoever. There are dozens of conditions in which a woman may be granted a khula without any agreement from the husband, although the standards vary wildly by region. Plus, divorces in every country on Earth typically involve financial bargaining—that's what alimony and property settlements are. Why is 'bargaining' in this case equated with wife selling? The section doesn't explain this.
• The paragraph on Bakhtiar's explanation of khula is half nonsense. Either Bakhtiar has no idea what he's talking about, or his words have been poorly presented. And even if we fixed the parts that are nonsense, it still implies that all khula involve the wife paying for the divorce, which is simply wrong.
• The section doesn't mention that payments from the wife are often related to property settlements or reimbursements, rather than simply being an arbitrary requirement for divorce. The later may have been commonly practiced in the past, but is not normal in contemporary Islamic society. The section presents it as if Islamic divorce hasn't changed any since 1904. Even in Pakistan, divorce for women has changed substantially over the past century.

The combination of all of these problems leads to a very misleading and confusing section. Kaldari (talk) 09:24, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

How can the wife be sold to herself? It doesn't make any sense.

I don't believe the author of the source reaches the conclusions that khula is "wife-selling", and I do think there is some original research going on. Note that if a verse from the Qur'an, a hadith or another classical Arabic source can be translated as having the term "wife-selling" and "khula" in the same sentence, that in itself is not sufficient for inclusion (see WP:PRIMARY). We need a reliable secondary source (a professor, an academic, a scholar etc.) to reach the conclusion that khula is a form of "wife-selling". I need to read the source for myself to determine whether or not it actually calls khula "wife-selling", and I'm waiting to obtain it.

While I'm waiting to get the source, can Nick explain why Bakhtiar is an expert on Islamic law or how is Qazi publications a reliable publisher. The onus is on Nick to prove the source is reliable.

Bless sins (talk) 16:48, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

I'll trim the list. It qualifies the basic statements, so it's not off-topic, but if it's too detailed I can summarize its relevance (maybe replacing much of it with "under some conditions").

The distinctions among schools are by Bakhtiar, not the other two authors. According to Bakhtiar, all of the schools agree that the basic type of divorce, the one in which the husband "sell[s]" her to herself, is permitted; the schools differ in some details about it. I'll try to clarify the basic inter-school agreement.

Motzki says it's one of the 4 types of divorce but doesn't say more about it than I attributed to him.

Divorce by this means is never required, to my knowledge. The section repeatedly says "may". Thus, as Kaldari wrote above, "khula doesn't necessarily include any bargaining whatsoever"; that's true, to my knowledge, and the section does not disagree. I'll try to clarify that it's optional.

I'll think some more about "bargaining". I think it's inherent in the meaning of the word because the source focuses on the one type of divorce, the other 3 forms of divorce not necessarily including bargaining, and a bargain is normally based on an exchange, in this case including what the wife will provide to the husband in exchange for what he will provide to her (unless a third party is providing or receiving).

I don't think the paragraph with the list based on Bakhtiar is wrong and it's not misrepresenting Bakhtier's writing. If it's wrong, then presumably there's a contrary source, not one that says only that khula doesn't require payment (it's already indicated as optional) but a source that says that khula or even every divorce form forbids payment. Then both sources, pro and con, are reportable. I haven't seen such a contrary source.

It's not synthesis because every statement is sourced and nothing is said that's not in a cited source or not about the article's subject.

Most of what the section discusses is not about child support or alimony (one passage is actually the opposite, the mother's compensating the father by her nursing and raising a child with no mention that the father will pay expenses for the service) and what other kinds of Muslim divorces, those not discussed in this article, do about child support, alimony, or any other payment is not discussed. So it doesn't equate child support and/or alimony with wife selling.

Payments that are property settlements or any other payments not about "sell[ing]" her are probably common but are not discussed because I agree they're not relevant. I'll try to clarify that in this article.

If the section is confusing, it may be because it may conflict with understandings readers already have. But it represents what sources say, to my knowledge it is correct, and thus it is up to readers who disagree to recall sources from which they have their understandings and present them.

Wives can be sold to themselves because people have been sold to themselves. It has happened in slavery in various places and years. How a slave accumulates money, I don't know, but some have, and some have used that to buy their own freedom, thus their owners/masters sold the slaves to themselves. Nothing inherently makes that possible in slavery but impossible in marriage/divorce.

No original research is present. If anyone thinks it is, please quote what's not sourced.

No primary source was cited. The text of the Qur'an was not cited, although sources may rely on it, and that's allowed by Wikipedia. Wikipedia does not reject secondary source authors who rely on primary sources. All the sources in the section are secondary.

A preliminary search shows Bakhtiar as a journal author on Islam and Kazi as a specialist publisher on Islam. I'll dig further, but I don't think there's any reason to doubt their reliability. I found no criticism of either that challenges their reliability.

I'll probably edit within a few days, maybe by Sunday, and I'll likely be online tomorrow.

Nick Levinson (talk) 17:50, 16 November 2012 (UTC) (Corrections: 18:04, 16 November 2012 (UTC))

"I don't think the paragraph with the list based on Bakhtiar is wrong and it's not misrepresenting Bakhtier's writing. If it's wrong, then presumably there's a contrary source, not one that says only that khula doesn't require payment (it's already indicated as optional) but a source that says that khula or even every divorce form forbids payment."

There is a a difference between husband or wife paying the other in a divorce, and "wife-selling" or "husband selling". Suppose a man has to pay money to his wife in a divorce, does that mean he is "buying" himself? If so, then many Western divorces should be listed at husband selling. And any Western divorce in which the wife pays her husband should be listed at this article.

"Wives can be sold to themselves because people have been sold to themselves. It has happened in slavery in various places and years."

You may have a fundamental misunderstanding that Islam treats women likes slaves. It does not.

If Bakhtiar has written a journal article, then it is that journal article that is reliable. Authorship of such an article doesn't confer upon someone reliability. Thousands of PhD students at some point in their lives end up being first or second (etc.) authors in some journal. That doesn't confer reliability upon everything they say for the rest of their lives. We need more on Bakhtiar for her to be reliable. She has been criticized as unqualified by a UCLA professor (see Laleh_Bakhtiar#Criticism).

Kazi being "specialist" simply means it focuses narrowly on Islamic topics. It doesn't necessarily mean expertise.

Bless sins (talk) 01:10, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

I edited:

• I replaced the first list, a related paragraph, and a sentence on intent as excessively detailed.
• I clarified that all 5 branches analyzed by Bakhtiar agree on the basic concept.
• I clarified that these payments are not necessarily for child support or alimony. Note that in U.S. legal practice such payments are more often to the mother or former wife, whereas under this form of Muslim divorce payment is to the father or former husband, so there should be even less cause for misunderstanding.
• I also clarified that they need not be property settlements. Thus, if the wife helped her husband build household furniture that he's keeping post-divorce, there's no entitlement that she be compensated for having helped build the furniture as a contribution to the marriage. That may or may not figure into their agreement resulting in divorce, but no source says it has to be figured in, and I clarified that in the article.

In further response to the question on Motzki's statement about bargaining for divorce being one of 4 methods under the Qur'an, the question being which one, since I said he didn't say more than I attributed to him, I should clarify that. While he said what's in the article as attributed to him, he also said more, which I quoted above in this Talk topic and which I also attributed to him, and I quoted it prior to the question. I don't want to get non-English terminology wrong, so I requote it here (diacritical marks omitted or approximated): "In the Qur'an, four types of divorce can be distinguished: two direct forms of divorce, talaq and talaq by iftida' , and two procedures resulting in divorce, ila' (or zihar) and li'an.... The connection between bridewealth and divorce shows how it is possible for an unhappily married woman to receive a divorce from a husband who is not prepared to let her go generously: bargaining for it. The Qur'an (Q 2:229) suggests this possibility through the term iftadat, 'to ransom herself.'" (Page 279, col. 2, to p. 280, col. 1.) Three points:

• The verb bargain is mainly either about 'negotiating the terms of an agreement or contract' or about 'coming to a price' (Webster's Third New International Dictionary (Merriam-Webster)), and in this context ransom is an element, so the bargaining is about price, whatever else may be included as well.
• None of these are called khula by Motzki.
• This also addresses the concern previously raised about intent. Of the 4 procedures he described, while 2 are "direct", 2 "result ... in divorce" (emphasis added). Thus, the latter 2 do not require that divorce have been intended all along for them to be valid for divorce. At any rate, I have deleted the sentence that gave rise to that concern, so it is now moot.

A linguistic error may be occurring in this Talk topic: This Talk topic is titled "Khula" and all of us have used the word, but maybe I at least should not have, because the article does not use the word anywhere. If khula is not identical to what the article does present, please clarify, because we should be discussing only what the article section is presenting, unless someone wants to add khula based on another source unfamiliar to me.

Ths article and the section in question are about selling wives (and the husband-selling article is about selling husbands) because those are what the sources say. Readers are free to disagree with the sources but they're still reportable in Wikipedia for what they say and we can add contrary or criticizing sources to provide a fuler description of the phenomenon. This article is not about all payments between spouses, it does not claim to be, and it does not cite sources about all manner of payments. It is about those actions that are sourced as wife-selling. I haven't seen a source that describes paying alimony as spouse sale and I haven't written about that.

Above, I am quoted as having written: "Wives can be sold to themselves because people have been sold to themselves. It has happened in slavery in various places and years." Where I wrote that, the second sentence thereafter says: "Nothing inherently makes that possible in slavery but impossible in marriage/divorce." This is not about whether "Islam treats women likes slaves". Rather, it is about the phenomenon of selling people so that someone else gets the proceeds. In their strictest senses on point, slavery is defined as "control by imposed authority" and slave, noun, as "one that is the chattel of another" (Webster's Third, supra). Those definitely include people who are sold with proceeds going to others. If the practice occurs anywhere in the world in religious or secular terms and if a source reports it, Wikipedia can report it. Criticisms of the characterization when sourced can also be reported.

The criticisms of Bakhtiar in Wikipedia are insufficient to find her unreliable, as already discussed above. The New York Times has been criticized much more extensively but it remains a reliable source.

I found reviews of Bakhtiar's cited work. Skimmed, they're mixed but not disqualifying. I will read them at home and edit or post accordingly thereafter. The publisher does not have to be expert; that is what authors are for; we often cite to major publishers who are probably expert in none of the subjects in which they publish. On the other hand, Kazi is evidently not a vanity press that publishes just anything someone pays them to publish. Being specialized lets them see if a manuscript does not warrant beng published under their name because it is too inexpert, and the same is true of Random House.

The same action may be both divorce and wife sale, and, in these cases, it is, contrary to the implication of the taggng of the section as maybe off-topic. Thus, that the purpose or outcome is divorce does not contradict the action being wife sale, as the sources describe it. A wife sale can achieve a divorce and still be a wife sale.

Nick Levinson (talk) 19:42, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

I found two scholarly reviews of the Encyclopedia. In short, both have criticisms but not such that the work is not reliable for the purpose for which cited in this Wikipedia article.

• According to reviewer Kathryn Coughlin, the Encyclopedia is a "reference work"<ref name="EncycIslamL-IslamLSoc-bkrvw-p409">[http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3399506.pdf?acceptTC=true Coughlin, Kathryn, ''Encyclopedia of Islamic Law: A Compendium of the Major Schools by Laleh Bakhtiar'', in ''Islamic Law and Society'', vol. 6, no. 3 (1999) ([§] ''Book Reviews'')], as accessed November 17, 2012, 11:52:04 a.m. (time zone unspecified) (via 192.168.52.73 (unknown if IP belongs to ''JStor'')), p. 409 (section title per running header) (author Coughlin of Georgetown Univ.) (in ''JStor'' (database) (subscription may be required)).</ref> which "provide[s] broad, comprehensive coverage" (ibid.) in a genre that "tend[s] to essentialize the vast, dynamic corpus of Islamic jurisprudence." (Ibid.) Coughlin continues, the Encyclopedia has a "purpose ... in the spirit of taqrīb or 'bringing closer' the ... five madhāhib in order that Muslims may more deeply appreciate the unity amongst the Islamic legal schools on a variety of topics." (Ibid.) Coughlin says a "systematic comparison of each school's position on the issues is sometimes lacking." (Id., p. 410.) Coughlin criticizes the work on an issue of marriage consummation for which Bakhtiar had cited a non-English source but Coughlin's criticism is based on an English translation not said to have been seen or relied on by Bakhtiar and the criticism does not claim false quotation or attribution but a difference of interpretation of sources including "classical debate". (Id., p. 410.) Coughlin compares the Encyclopedia to a "non-scholarly reference work [that omits] the subtle changes in the law". (Id., p. 411.) However, Coughlin says "Bakhtiar's purposes ... have, for the most part, been accomplished" (id., p. 411) and that the "limitations of a volume such as this" (id., p. 411) are "unavoidable" (id., p. 411), thus we cannot say they are Bakhtiar's fault because of Coughlin's review. Coughlin says Bakhtiar "has accomplished what she intended ..., [but] it may be that the desired effect is less than fruitful" (id., p. 411), the work seeming to present "rigid[ity]" (id., p. 411) in the law as "unchanged since the time of the Prophet" (id., p. 411), but the "fault" (id., p. 412) is "of course" (id., p. 411) that "of the genre and a necessary consequence of the attempt to compile a one-volume encyclopedia on 'Islamic law.'" (Id., p. 412.) Thus, Coughlin criticizes the work mainly for not doing more: not showing change over time, not distinguishing more among schools, on some points disagreeing with some sources, and for being limited to one volume, but the work is used in this Wikipedia article for current authority where the schools agree and within what Bakhtiar, as a scholar, is permitted in interpreting sources because the work is secondary. Single-volume works are commonly accepted as reliable throughout Wikipedia. If a more thorough work is available or comes to be published (I am not aware of one now) and it adds meaningfully to the content, please cite it.
• According to Wael B. Hallaq, "[t]he" book's ... legal topics ... [in] their coverage lack ... thoroughness, especially when compared to the comprehensive legal works produced throughout the medieval period."<ref>Hallaq, Wael B., ''Encyclopedia of Islamic Law: A Compendium of the Major Schools by Laleh Bakhtiar; Kevin Reinhart'', in ''Middle East Studies Association Bulletin'', vol. 31, no. 1 (July, 1997), as accessed November 17, 2012, 11:57:32 a.m. (time zone unspecified) (via 192.168.52.73 (unknown if IP belongs to ''JStor'')), p. 100 (author Hallaq of McGill Univ.) (in ''JStor'' (database) (subscription may be required)).</ref> Hallaq says Bakhtiar does not name the author of the work she translated (ibid.), although Coughlin found the name from Bakhtiar's Encyclopedia (Coughlin, id., p. 409) (it's in the Introduction, not by Bakhtiar but in Bakhtiar's Encyclopedia, at p. xxxi) and the Encyclopedia also has notes citing sources (see Encyclopedia, pp. 547–590, passim). Hallaq criticizes the sourcing on which the Encyclopedia relies (id., pp. 100–101 (sentences through page break on Mughniyya)), partly because it "make[s] available the legal views of all schools so that the Muslims of today can pick and choose therefrom whatever suits their needs." (Id., p. 100 (quotation) & pp. 100–101 (on Mughniyya).) Hallaq notes "the so-called taqrīb, a relatively recent tendency to bring Sunnism and Shi'ism closer to each other." (Id., p. 100 (in "Shi'ism" apostrophe-like mark straightened).) Hallaq says that on "random comparison" (id., p. 101) "Bakhtiar's translation is rather free" (id., p. 101), but acknowledges that Bakhtiar refers to herself as having adapted for the Encyclopedia (id., p. 101), and Hallaq says she did not "mend Mughniyya's ... notes" (id., p. 101). Hallaq calls "the pedigree ... in terms of substance and authority ... somewhat dubious" (id., p. 101) and advises, "researchers in the field must be cautious in using" the Encyclopedia. (Id., p. 101.) Hallaq concludes that the Encyclopedia "remains a useful manual for Muslims and general readers who do not read Arabic and who wish to familiarize themselves with a version of Islamic law." (Id., p. 101.) Hallaq seems to believe that the work is not sufficiently traditional in its content. (Id., passim.) Consistently with Hallaq's cautiously favorable conclusion of utility, it is not Wikipedia's purpose to lean to traditional and reject modern knowledge of Islam or to favor either Sunni or Shia over the other.

Bakhtiar's volume is a "concise handbook", according to A. Kevin Reinhart. Encyclopedia, p. XXXIII (Introduction) (author Reinhart of religion dep't, Dartmouth Coll.). Reinhart also wrote, "[t]his text [on "family law"] is a very good survey of the school positions, but in its scope, and argumentation, it only scratches the surface of the very rich intellectual tradition of Islamc law." Id., p. XXXV. This is in the Encyclopedia, and it's unlikely it would have been unless Bakhtiar had approved. It might be nice to find a lengthier treatment and I welcome it being offered for Wikipedia. But concision is not a disqualification for Wikipedia. Newspapers are even more concise and they're generally reliable sources, some having been cited for criticism of Bakhtiar. So is this volume reliable, and we may cite it.

Other issues were raised in this discussion:

• On criticism of her posted into Wikipedia at Laleh Bakhtiar#Criticism, I have edited that Wikipedia article, because it was in error, partly because what sourcing said was exaggerated.
• On whether an event being a divorce means the wife could not have been sold, consider that an earlier event can be a marriage even though the bride could have been bought. Both may violate a sense of justice, may violate some religious strictures, and may be punishable but may still have occurred. If secondary sources report they have occurred, they are reportable in this article and in the article on bride-buying, respectively.
• Kazi Publications was described in Publishers Weekly in 2002 as "the oldest and largest independent Muslim publisher and distributor of books on Islam in North America."<ref>[http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/viewarticle?data=dGJyMPPp44rp2%2fdV0%2bnjisfk5Ie45PeI6qTreefkrH3m5fGMvqevR7CrrUqup7A4r7CxTLirtzjOw6SM8Nfsi9%2fZ8oHt5Od8u6OvS7Kmr0uyrLRRpOLfhuWz44ak2uBV3%2bbmPvLX5VW%2fxKR57LO0TK6nskiynOSH8OPfjLvm4n7E6%2bqE0tv2jAAA&hid=104 Nelson, Marcia Z., ''Investigating Islam: New Books on the World's Second Largest Religion May be Challenged by a Softer Market'', in ''Publishers Weekly'', vol. 249, issue 12 (March 25, 2002)] as accessed November 25, 2012, p. S10, col. 2 ([§] ''Religion Update'') (in ''Academic Search Premier'' (database) (subscription may be required) (''PDF Full Text'')).</ref>
• Bakhtiar arguably was criticized for her use of dictionary/ies. She has a doctorate. I think she knows how to use dictionaries. Scholars may use dictionaries and other reference works as often as they wish, and excellent scholars do (when they can), thereby improving their scholarship. We want scholars to do the best work possible, and we don't care how often they use reference works to that end. Unless someone reports significant faults in her translations, not merely differences of linguistic opinion, the fact that she used dictionaries is not a valid criticism here of her work as a reliable source.

Nick Levinson (talk) 19:34, 25 November 2012 (UTC) (Minor corrections, mainly of typing & formatting errors: 19:57, 25 November 2012 (UTC))

Unfortunately, I still haven't been able to access the resource. From what you quote above, however, it seems the author is not calling khula a form of wife-selling.

• "Bargaining" can refer to "'negotiating the terms of an agreement or contract' or about 'coming to a price'". Clearly bargaining need not involve a "price". The word "ransom" is not the author's, but the Qur'an's. To use the Qur'an to make an argument in this case is a violation of WP:NOR. If the author uses the Qur'an to make an argument, that is fine. But that is not clear from the portion of the text you quoted.

Again I suspect that none of the sources say "divorce in Islam is like a wife-sale". If you wish this dispute to be resolved more quickly, please quote the source that says that.Bless sins (talk) 20:40, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

The English and non-English terminology for the selling of the wife to accomplish a divorce and the corresponding purchase to that end are given largely in the third paragraph of the section we're discussing, while other English descriptions to similar effect are given in the same section, passim. The descriptions of the change in family relationship and of the payment for that purpose or with that effect are within the article's scope.

I did not quote the Qur'an and did not say I was. I quoted Bakhtiar for "ransom", as the endnote shows. On that point, I expect to look to clarify that and will likely be back online in a couple of days or so.

The word khula is probably not used anywhere by any of the sources, but the words khul, chol, al-khul, al-talaq, al-bay, and al-shira are used in several contexts given in the section. If there is a relevant distinction between khula and especially khul and al-khul and if we need to say that the practice, while known by the terminology given in the section, is not known precisely by the word khula (which I didn't use in the article in any case), then that would be an important semantic distinction that should be added to the article, if a source can be provided.

Nick Levinson (talk) 22:21, 2 December 2012 (UTC) (Corrected my unintended excess italicization, failure to italicize, and misspelling: 22:28, 2 December 2012 (UTC))

I have made one correction and one change and made clearer that the word "ransom" is Bakhtiar's. The passage in the Encyclopedia, at p. 512 (single quotation marks so in original and n.  described in article endnote), is this: "According to the Hanafi, Hanbali, Shafii and Maliki schools, it is ... valid to conclude a 'divorce for consideration' agreement with anyone apart from one's wife. Therefore, if a stranger asks the husband to divorce his wife for a sum which he undertakes to pay, and the husband divorces her, the divorce is valid even if the wife is unaware of it and on coming to know does not consent. The stranger will have to pay the ransom to the divorcer.¹¹ The Jafari observe that such a 'divorce for consideration' is invalid and it is not binding upon the stranger to pay anything. But it is valid for a stranger to act as a guarantor of the consideration by the wife's permission and ask the husband, after the wife's permission, to divorce her for such a consideration guaranteed by him. Thus, if the husband divorces her on this condition, it is binding on the guarantor to pay him that amount and then claim it from the divorcee." There does not seem to be a distinction between ransom and consideration, but I have now edited the article as if there is, to hew more closely to the source without quoting at length (which Wikipedia generally eschews).

The only other use of ransom in the Encyclopedia is this: "... She then returned to the Prophet and implored his mercy saying, 'May I be your ransom, O Prophet of God, look into my affair.' Aishah then said to her, 'Curtail your speech and your quarrel. Don't you see the face of the Messenger of God? ...". The page number/s unknown but apparently somewhere in Notes, this is per consecutive Amazon.com snippets (Google doesn't offer a preview and it's not in archive.org); ransom, affair, and Aishah were not found in the hardcopy index. This, as the only other instance of ransom in the Encyclopedia, is probably irrelevant to our discussion.

You wrote, "I suspect that none of the sources say 'divorce in Islam is like a wife-sale'. If you wish this dispute to be resolved more quickly, please quote the source that says that." I agree on the first point and disagree on the second. This is about one form of Islamic divorce, not all forms of Islamic divorce. You have supplied a quotation as in need of sourcing but that quotation is not from the article. Any disagreement with what the article says should be based on what the article says. The precise quotation you have requested be sourced, not being in the article, therefore does not need to be sourced. What in fact is in the article is sourced. What is in the article about the one form of Islamic divorce is also within the subject of wife-selling. Several times in the article is the husband's selling of his wife and her buying her way out of the marriage discussed and sourced. It is not necessary that if someone generates another wording that the new wording must also be supported with a sourced quotation. It is sufficient that the article's content as it stands be sourced, and that has been done.

If another source disputes that the one form of Islamic divorce is wife sale, we would report both sides of that dispute. I am not familiar with any such contrary source. A source that is silent on point is not a contrary source. If you find a contrary source, please cite it here. Until someone does, we may report what the article now reports.

Nick Levinson (talk) 16:27, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Now that I've rewritten portions of the Islam section and addressed concerns about sourcing and about divorce, I propose to delete the Off-Topic template. Nick Levinson (talk) 17:43, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Done. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:42, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

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