Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2024 July 23

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July 23

File:Secret Service Director Hosts RNC Public Safety Briefing.webm

Any clue who the people in this video are (other than Kimberly Cheatle obviously). I assume they must be high ranking officials and not just random SS agents Trade (talk) 00:19, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

The man is FBI Special Agent in Charge Michael Hensle.^[1]  --Lambiam 13:32, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

The woman is U.S. Secret Service 2024 RNC Coordinator Audrey Gibson-Cicchino.^[2]  --Lambiam 13:59, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

"Mary was not the mother of Jesus"

I'm not quite managing to wrap my head around this bit in Trojan Horse scandal:

At the Oldknow academy, children were asked whether they believed in Christmas and encouraged to chant "no we don't" in response. The pupils were told at an assembly not to send Christmas cards and that Mary was not the mother of Jesus.

The original source is the "Kershaw Report", I believe (see opening paragraph of the article lede for context):

We are told that in or around December 2013, a Christmas assembly was held during which statements were made that children should not be sending Christmas cards, that Jesus was not born of Mary and that it was unbelievable that Christians believe in the Christmas story; children were encouraged to chant `No, we don't' when asked questions such as `Do we celebrate or believe in Christmas?' and whether they believed that Jesus was born on Christmas day.

The basic idea is that this is portraying "Islamists" disparaging Christianity by disparaging Christmas, I take it. Claiming that Mary was not the mother of Jesus seems a strange way to go about that, though. Going by Mary in Islam and Jesus in Islam, they're both somewhat major figures in the Koran (dozens to hundreds of mentions), and their relationship is clear and no different than in the Christian version. The modern Christmas tradition is such a hodgepodge that it takes practically no effort to pick any number of holes in it, so why come up with something so outlandish?

Maybe this is just a straightforward mistake? Like, someone at the assembly in question did say that, but that someone was a giant ignoramus, or someone else downstream misunderstood or misremembered what was said? Or maybe I'm missing something... which is why I'm posting this.

Thanks for any elucidation!

- 2A02:560:4DE3:6F00:8DF4:9B2E:34:B383 (talk) 15:57, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Double quotation marks are for quotations in general. Single quotation marks are for quotations within quotations. (I believe that in some old forms of English it might have been the other way around, but I'm sure it is this way in most forms of English today.) Georgia guy (talk) 16:22, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

wp:deny
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
The source for the claim that children were told that Jesus was not born of Mary is behind a paywall. Can you quote the relevant passage? 92.29.249.130 (talk) 16:36, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

This one?

At the Oldknow academy, children were told at an assembly that they should not send Christmas cards and that Mary was not the mother of Jesus. Children were asked whether they believed in Christmas and encouraged to chant "no we don't".

I'm assuming their source is the report I quoted in the OP, so I skipped straight to that.

- 2A02:560:4DE3:6F00:8DF4:9B2E:34:B383 (talk) 16:46, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Generally speaking, the usual strategy is to flip between single and double at each level, AFAIK. So quotations within quotations use whatever the outer quotation didn't use, and quotations within quotations within quotations go back to whatever the outer quotation did use, and so forth. Using singles for the outer quotation is a bit, but not a lot, unusual in modern writing, I'd say.

- 2A02:560:4DE3:6F00:8DF4:9B2E:34:B383 (talk) 16:43, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

In American English, the double quotation marks are on the outside, the singles on the inside. In British English, the opposite is common, but not universal; a habit originating in the late 19th century. There are more languages where single outside – double inside is common (for example Dutch, which has copied British habits). PiusImpavidus (talk) 08:41, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

The Mary and Jesus of Islam differ in a number of ways from the Mary and Jesus of the Bible or Christianity: In the Qur'an, Mary is identified with Miriam of the Old Testament (the daughter of Amram and the sister of Aaron), while Jesus did not die on the cross, but only appeared to do so (reviving the old Docetic heresy). However, there's nothing about Jesus not being the son of Mary, and I don't think that such a belief is mainstream among Muslims, according to any information I have. However, disrespecting non-Muslim holidays is more widespread (some varieties of Sunnism in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, etc. disrespect those Shi`i holidays which are not also practiced by Sunnis). AnonMoos (talk) 21:35, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

One possible explanation is that the author of the report made up the story that the children were told that Mary was not the mother of Jesus, ignorant of their significance and relationship in Islam.  --Lambiam 22:35, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Possible, yes, but again, it doesn't make much sense to me that someone simply making stuff up would come up with this, when there's such a wealth of more pertinent and plausible ways to criticize Christmas. The explanation that seems least unlikely to me at this point is that this is a case of Chinese whispers, basically: Something was said at the assembly, and something ended up in the report as a result, but there was so much distortion in between that the sense was largely lost. Especially if the report relied on a single account for this, and if the person giving the account was a child.

- 2A02:560:4DE3:6F00:8DF4:9B2E:34:B383 (talk) 23:36, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

If the author made this inflammatory accusation based on unverifiable hearsay, it is just as bad as making it up. In either case they are ignorant about the religion they seek to disparage. Criticism of Christmas as having become a pagan feast in servitude of Mammon is also raised by Christians. Whatever the origin of the story, the reason it was selected for the report must have been that the author knew it would offend the religious sensibilities and draw the ire of a segment of his audience.  --Lambiam 20:26, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

To put it another way, the author wanted publicity. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:08, 24 July 2024 (UTC)