Talk:Mass sexual assault in Egypt/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Contradiction

The last line of Terminology and Background:

The transliteration followed the Egyptian pronunciation, taḥarrush gamāʿī (with a hard ⟨g⟩), rather than the standard pronunciation, taḥarrush jamāʿī.[19]

This contradicts many other parts calling it a miss-transliteration rather than just an alternative due to the differrence between Egyptian Arabic and Classical Arabic.

The North Rhine-Westphalia Ministry of Justice in Germany, in a report dated 10 January 2016, compared the Cologne attacks to the mass assaults in Egypt, transliterating the latter mistakenly as "taharrush gamea" and referring to them as Arabic, rather than Egyptian.

This part also seems to sugest that Egyptian isn't a dialect of Arabic and is a completly seperate language. Any sugestions on what to change?SKG1110 (talk) 09:36, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

The second one since the final part is not in the reference (the report of the German Ministry of Justice) which only speaks of "a modus operandi in Arab countries": in arabischen Ländern ein Modus Operandi. (And of course how much varieties of Arabic are separate languages is an open question.) Oliv0 (talk) 10:34, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

But gamea is still a mistransliteration of what should be gamai, no? And it seems the German police may have been wrong, and it's only a modus operandi in Egypt. --Sammy1339 (talk) 14:51, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Lead

Hi Koncorde, I've tried to copy edit the changes you made to the lead, but you removed certain issues and added certain others, so I'm finding it difficult to maintain the flow. Can you say what you dislike about the current lead?

One point to note is that the attacks are not always coordinated, and it's important to make clear that the behaviour spread beyond the security forces after 2005. SarahSV ^(talk) 22:47, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Repinging because of typo: Koncorde. SarahSV ^(talk) 22:48, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Note: this edit of mine was a mistake. I didn't intend to revert to the IP's version, which includes "usually of Islamic faith." I intended to revert to the version of 2 February. I want to make that clear in case anyone thinks I support adding that phrase. SarahSV ^(talk) 23:21, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

The existing lede is imbalanced, and places equal emphasis on the 2016 issue and provides little actual historical context. When your first paragraph says "Here's a word with 12 years history of events, you may only know it because some Germans said it wrong in 2016" then you are doing the subject a disservice. The actual article itself is largely okay, but when 75% of the article is talking about its use as a political weapon - but the lede only gives it brief lip service then it may be missing the point.

• The topic in the infobox outlines it as "Mass sexual assault in Egypt". Most of the sources support the idea that it is coordinated (most in fact explicitly quote that it was coordinated by security forces, plus the paragraph outlining the tactic suggests some coordination too). Infobox also states "First documented in current form, Cairo, 2005" - the "current form" based on all other sources from 2005 and subsequent refer to coordination by security forces or other groups with specific goals (and the commentators section also outlines that there was a broader tactical aspect).
• There are no sources suggesting that it is spontaneous or uncoordinated. It might be, but what evidence is there?
• I did not remove any context relating to its spread - I placed it within the preceding paragraph which is discussing the actual tactic (not sure it's particularly lede material in any case).

Overall the lede needs far more context relating to what is the dominant subject of this article.

Also, yes, the Islamic or Muslim reference is irrelevant, particularly if the context is one of political motivation (in which case it is a wider issue involving societal attitudes etc). Koncorde (talk) 23:24, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

The lede points out that political motivations were what started this but later developments had no such political motivation. The subsequent events had no State backing and trying to shoehorn societal attitudes as "political motivation" is highly disingenuous. Maybe you meant an Egyptian (has spread beyond those boarders) or Arabic event and not a religious inspired situation? Brainplay (talk) 06:33, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

I agree about the 2016 sentence, but that will go if the page move is successful, so we should wait until that's decided rather than trying to work out how to fit it into a different structure.

Re: coordination, most of the sources say it is not coordinated now (or largely not), though it began that way. See the footnote in the lead "after [2005] it spread across the country like wildfire." There are numerous others that say something similar. See the Reasons and Prevalence sections for sources and what they identify as the causes. SarahSV ^(talk) 23:53, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

I see that, when I returned in the first sentence to the previous formulation about the use of taharrush jamai/gamea ("sexual assault of women in public by large groups of men"), I undid the change by Aquillion to "sexual assault by multiple attackers", this can be discussed here but I think the English use of this phrase has usually been for a "mass/crowd" phenomenon. Oliv0 (talk) 10:19, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Historical take on the origins of this ritual

Although recently publicised Taharrush jamai is not a new phenomenon. This ritual has been practiced in Muslim countries for over 1000 years. It is well documented and has been witnessed but never openly spoken about until it was widely publicised by the Cologne and Stockholm incidents. Those who witnessed the events describe them rightly as ritual ceremonies.

"Taharrush" in Arabic means mutilation as in circumcision or Female genital mutilation. This ancient religious practice goes back in history to the origins of Islam. The ritual of Taharrush jamai is an ancient Islamic ritual which involves the sexual assault of women in public by large groups of Muslim men. The men gather moving in circles to hide the woman while chanting and dancing arround the woman as she is gang raped.[n] <re> http://billmuehlenberg.com/2016/01/11/islam-and-rape-jihad/ </ref> — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.155.42.18 (talk) 09:08, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Unfortunately, Bill Muehlenberg's personal website is not a reliable source. --Aquillion (talk) 09:23, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

تحرش taḥarrush does not mean that at all, and ritual and chanting in circles is not in the source which only speaks (unreliably) of wartime rape in Islam. Oliv0 (talk) 09:45, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Also تطهير in English "Taharr" - "Taharru" to mutiliate circumcise. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.155.42.18 (talk) 09:59, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

As I said previously, تحرش taḥarrush "harassment, molestation" is from حرش ḥarasha "provoke, scratch" (akin to Hebrew חרש ẖarash "carve, plough"). It is unrelated to this تطهير taṭhīr "sterilization, circumcision, cleansing" which is from طهر ṭahhara "clean, circumcise". Oliv0 (talk) 14:14, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

An issue is the use and transformation of the word "taharrush." Older generations use the term for violent, physical sexual assault, younger generations and activists use it for any kind of sexual harassment. I don't think anyone would argue that organized, violent attacks fall under the definition and that seems to be what happened in Germany and what the article should focus on. --DHeyward (talk) 04:15, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Tahrir Square

Just noting here that one or more editors are saying these attacks happen only in Tahrir Square and are coordinated. Neither of these claims is correct, according to the RS. The attacks have been documented many times in Tahrir Square, but also elsewhere in Cairo, and indeed all over the country. There is widespread consensus that they are no longer coordinated (or, at least, that most are not). SarahSV ^(talk) 00:26, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

The problem is that the "attacks" section uses sources solely referencing the Tahrir Square attacks (and later attacks on protesters that commentators have connected with those) without making that clear. When it says "the attacks", for instance, it's almost directly quoting the Amnesty International report on typical attacks in Tahrir Square. eg. search the source for "few minutes to an hour" and you'll find the source for almost everything in that section -- but it's describing a specific set of attacks on January 13, 2013, and that context is lost in our summary. --Aquillion (talk) 04:01, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Tahrir Square is the epicentre, but the attacks occur elsewhere in Cairo. The October 2006 one was in a street near Tahrir Square. And sources discuss them happening elsewhere in the country to a lesser extent. That section describes how such attacks occur; that we use examples from one location doesn't mean we have to change the heading. SarahSV ^(talk) 04:08, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

But the section (at least, as it's worded now) doesn't describe how such attacks occur in general. It directly paraphrases sources that are describing specific attacks that took place on January 13, 2013; it needs to be made clear, at least, that these descriptions are just being presented as an example. The current reading makes it seem like Amnesty International is giving a description of a broader practice of "Taharrush jamai" (a term that they don't even use), rather than reporting a specific set of attacks at a specific place and time. We can use them as examples, yes, but we need to make it clear that they are only examples, and that things like "the attacks last from a few minutes to over an hour" or "the men are usually in their 20s and 30s" or the entire paragraph about being separated from the crowd are directly paraphrasing specific incidents rather than making broad statements about the nature of sexual assault in Egypt (or sexual assault as it falls under "Taharrush jamai", whatever that covers.) Again, read the wording in that section, then search over its source and look at the context where it appears -- it doesn't support the way we're using it. If we want to make broader statements about sexual harassment, we need to rely on broader sources, and make it clear exactly what their scope is. --Aquillion (talk) 04:14, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

This isn't about sexual harassment. This is an article about a particular kind of sexual assault: mass sexual assault by a crowd. Outside wartime, the only modern examples I can find are in Egypt. All the women describe very similar kinds of attacks. Most of the sources discuss the attacks that occur in Tahrir Square or nearby, but the sources make clear that these attacks are reported elsewhere too in Egypt. You seem to be arguing that the Tahrir Square attacks might be different in some way. SarahSV ^(talk) 04:58, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

The use of the term is broad. Among women's rights activists that use it include sexual harassment in any form. Older, more conservative generations won't use the term to describe what happens to women that aren't at least wearing a Hijab, including assault. That's just in Egypt and there are other regions where the term is also regionally distinct. The concept is similar to western discussions but it can't escape tradition, religion and language. But you are correct that I think in Egypt, this term always applies to the type of attack you described even if there are boundary disagreements. --DHeyward (talk) 05:07, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

• I'm not arguing that the Tahrir Square assaults are necessarily different, just that we can't take a literal description taken from collected interviews about those specific assaults and present it without the qualifier that this is just an example taken from this specific thing -- if we want to use the Tahrir Square assaults as an example of typical mass sexual assaults, we need a source saying that they're typical, and we need to specifically say in the article "here are descriptions of some specific Tahrir Square assaults from this time period, which are typical examples..." The old version just says "these attacks" as if it's giving a general description of mass sexual assault by a crowd, and then gives a bunch of stats and numbers and descriptions of how it goes down; but it didn't make it clear that those were just an example -- it literally reads as if it is saying "this is how mass sexual assault always happens", which isn't what the sources that were being paraphrased there say at all. --Aquillion (talk) 05:33, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

There appears to be confusion with regards to coordination. There is both the coordination of the group (politically) and then the coordination of the group (to commit the act). There is no question based on the sources that the group coordinates to harass. It also happens that some of the harassment was political in nature.

Otherwise I agree with Aquillion as it revolves around similar issues I had with the article which is that it is trying to be very general, yet almost all the sources refer to specific documented instances. Whereas the "widespread" claims are rather more generic. Koncorde (talk) 06:22, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Not sure if this source has been presented [1] --DHeyward (talk) 03:47, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, it's in the article. SarahSV ^(talk) 04:08, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Locked but keylock logo

Hey, just a quick question. I see that this article does not have a edit function, and thats okay if it is a controversial topic. However i do not see the keylock symbol on the page, is this something new or has wiki changed its policies? thanks in advance — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.197.124.253 (talk) 09:36, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Im going to wager that something stopped you from seeing the lock, it has been visible here — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:BCA4:B660:ED6F:BE6:4F2A:F103 (talk) 08:34, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia and politics

This article has been pretty eye-opening with regards to how easy it is for dedicated groups to capture Wikipedia and use it to push an agenda. It is frankly baffling that a word which literally just means "collective sexual harassment" has been Otherized and made to seem like a rampant phenomenon exclusive to Arab/Islamic culture, somehow different from when the 'civilized' world does it. By refusing to translate it and opting to transliterate instead it is elevated to a reified, static concept exclusive to the Arab Other. It is akin to transliterating the Spanish word for "gang-rape" and turning it into a Wikipedia article to make it seem an alien phenomenon, exclusive to the Hispanic world, somehow 'different' and far removed from our normal conception of gang rape, which occurs everywhere in the world. All of which of course serves certain groups. This article is fundamentally political; fundamentally racist.

The fact that this article only appeared in the post-Cologne environment; the severe dearth of any academic research on this issue; and the fact that no counterpart in the Arabic WIkipedia exists is pretty damning. If anything at least I now realize how political an act Wikipedia editing can be; it is no longer the pure collectivist human endeavour I thought it was. Thanks for reading.

209.226.10.166 (talk) 17:56, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Do the Spanish do "gang-rape" in a way fairly unique to them? If so, then yes we should have an article under the Spanish word for "gang-rape" discussing this unique aspect of their rape culture. In most Western cultures however, gang rapes are almost exclusively spontaneous and covert crimes of opportunity, occurring out of public view and usually involving intoxication. Almost never in the West have crowds gathered in public squares with the explicit and premeditated intent to commit mass sexual assaults--and never in the hundreds or thousands--which is precisely what Taharrush jamai is and why we have a separate article for it. Even the most similar occurrences in the West (like the Woodstock '99 assaults or the Puerto Rican Day ethnically-driven mob assault) have been different from Taharrush jamai in that they've either been completely spontaneous, and/or perpetrated by single-digit numbers of attackers--and have been very very rare. Taharrush jamai, however, was practiced as a premeditated act (often with a script for what to say to victims) by large crowds sometimes numbering hundreds, in dozens of major incidents in many cities all over Europe in just one night. That is a unique phenomenon which needs a unique name and its own article under that name. 96.241.136.57 (talk) 15:22, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

Giving a FN for these claims: FAZ.net (german) (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung): "Angesichts der Karriere jedoch, die der Begriff „taharrush gamea“ jetzt in Deutschland macht, sind ägyptische Frauenrechtlerinnen irritiert: Aus einer simplen Vokabel für sexuelle Massenübergriffe ist ein scheinbar genuin arabisches Kulturphänomen mit eigenem Wikipedia-Eintrag geworden. „Taharrush“ bedeutet Belästigung, „gamea“ gemeinschaftlich. „Man kann die sexuellen Angriffe auf dem Tahrir-Platz aus vielerlei Gründen nicht mit den Ereignissen von Silvester in Köln vergleichen“, schrieb die Aktivistin Mariam Kirollos auf ihrer Facebook-Seite. Des Klischees vom triebhaften Orientalen sei sie wirklich überdrüssig."

Translated: "Regarding the career of the term "taharrush gamea" now in Germany, egytian feminists are confused: A simple vocable has apparantly become a genuine arabic culture phenomenon with its own WP entry. Taharrush means harassment, gamea collaborative. >>You can't compare the sexual attacks on the Tahrir place with the incidents in Cologne out of several reasons<<, the activist Mariam Kirollos wrote on her Facebook page. She is really sick of the cliché of the libidinal (or compulsive?) orientalic."

-- 77.64.190.242 (talk) 00:28, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

"This article is fundamentally political", yes, because violence always is political. "This article is ... fundamentally racist", I don`t agree. The article is well done, and offers important information. Nobody is talking racist, nobody says: 'The men of this or that ethnic group are born rapists and will always be bad to women.' 193.175.48.228 (talk) 11:50, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

We are facing with a political struggle between two anti-racisms. Some people want to rape any women, not only women from their own race (supposing that races even exist); some people want to jail/hang/whatever any rapist, not only rapists from their own race (supposing that races even exist). It's a conflict, indeed. But racism isn't involved. By the way, I don't see how being against rape could be racist: there are women of all races (supposing that races even exist). Except if you don't include women... Do you, 209.226.10.166 ? Pldx1 (talk) 12:33, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

I 100% agree. This article is a disgrace for Wikipedia. Imagine if the Arabic Wikipedia had an article called "school shootings" (not translated but using the English expression), suggesting that this is somehow a phenomenon exclusive to the English-speaking world. And imagine on top of that if that article was created right after a Canadian committed a school shooting in Cairo. There has been and there is sexual harassment or collective sexual harassment everywhere around the world, and yes it is more prevalent in some places than it is in others (but the fact that mass shootings are objectively more prevalent in the US than elsewhere still would not justify the creation of an article using the foreign, in this case, English-language term, in the Arabic Wikipedia). But using a foreign term from a foreign language first suggests that there is a distinction between "taharrush jamai" and collective sexual harassment (which there isn't, even if the article pathetically tries to portray the modus operandi of this crime as somehow "original", "special", or "new"), and second as the user above already wrote, it suggests that it is somehow exclusive to the Arab world (which again, it isn't). Why is there no article called सामूहिक यौन उत्पीड़न or harcèlement sexuel collectif in the English Wikipedia? There are plenty of documented cases of group sexual violence in India or in France! Or while we're at it, why don't we start creating an article called "Steuerhinterziehung" (tax evasion in German) in the English-language Wikipedia? Because there is plenty of tax evasion in Switzerland! And we don't have a word in English for "Steuerhinterziehung"! Seriously, this article is disgusting, and it's sad to see what Wikipedia has become. 41.130.9.98 (talk) 16:52, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

This article is well done and reasonably objective, it is inherently political because of the subject it deals with. This article should be mainly about the phonomenon in Egypt (as it already is), nowhere in the article is it sugested that collective harrassment only happens in islamic or Egyptian culture, however the use of agents provocateurs in Egypt, and the sheer scale of it certainly warrants the existence of this article. The part titled Comparison with incidents in Europe, should also be a part of the article as many media and political entities have made such comparisons. That being said I fully support the creation of a seperate article concerned with collective harrassment or mass sexual assault in far broader terms to include taharrush, eve teasing and other cases worldwide of collective harrasment.SKG1110 (talk) 09:13, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Speaking of politics what is this tripe doing in here?

"Nehad Abu Komsan, head of the Egyptian Center for Women's Rights, argues that sexual harassment is a symptom of the country's political and economic oppression, and that men are "lashing out at those next down the line in the patriarchy."[10]:126 Hussein el Shafie of OpAntiSH has argued that the attacks are like a "tear-gas bomb" to get women off the streets – not sexual but stemming from a sense of entitlement.[21]:3:25 According to a 2013 paper by Nazra for Feminist Studies..."

this has no place on wikipedia. what nonsense.120.148.162.145 (talk) 18:57, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Of course it is exclusive, have you seen anything like that happen in any other culture?193.198.70.211 (talk) 11:23, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Addition of Muslims or Arabs to first sentence

I'm leaving this for any admin willing to deal with it. Several IPs or new/little-used accounts have arrived since 1 February to add Muslims or Arabs to the first sentence. It may be the same person; more likely it's several people from the same discussion board. The first edit, which added "Muslim," was by 82.46.35.158. [2]

Reverts: [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16]

Lectonar semi-protected at 10:16, 5 February.

Reverting continued (from the second diff they're adding Arab instead of Muslim): [17][18][19][20]

• Accounts: SRM 73, Triforcefff, Rezz22, Ekiph, LordCazicThule, Thesqueegeeman

The IPs gelocate to the UK, Netherlands, United States, Ireland, Canada and Finland. SarahSV ^(talk) 21:11, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Are you suggesting the men participating in the Arabic practice of Taharrush jamai in Cairo and Cologne are not Arabic? As I understand it, all reported instances of this practice were perpetuated by men of Arab appearance and descent. If not, why is there an entire article devoted to the literal Arabic translation of "collective harassment" on English Wikipedia? If you're going to go out of your way to disassociate the practice from a race on the basis that any men could instigate this type of harassment, why keep the name? 2605:6001:E2E1:8800:49BA:780D:85E:8BB6 (talk) 00:16, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Taharrush jamai is merely the Arabic for collective harassment. It is not specific to any one region or culture, as we have seen such collective harassment resulting in sexual assault and rape in many events in the US and other events in Europe, committed by non-Arabs. I do agree this page should not even exist with this title. Taharrush jamai should merely be a mention on the English page on "Mass Sexual Assault in Egypt" as to what it is called in Arabic, next to collective harassment in English Sufficientiae (talk) 00:57, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

It appears to be a term of Arabic origin with a more specific meaning than "collective harassment" it has a very particular modus operandi — Preceding unsigned comment added by 120.148.162.145 (talk • contribs) 14:38, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Is this an example of "Taharrush jamai"? Is this an example of "Taharrush jamai"? Is this an example of "Taharrush jamai"? If those are not examples of "Taharrush jamai" committed by non-Muslims and non-Arabs, then what constitutes "Taharrush jamai" according to you? Sufficientiae (talk) 03:50, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Doxxing: It's ok when we do it! No bad tactics, only bad targets! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:8084:4E40:E380:4889:7BC5:BDDE:7805 (talk) 12:27, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

You do know anyone can click on the "History" page of an article on Wikipedia and see the IPs themselves, right? Sufficientiae (talk) 03:50, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Why on earth would you think it's okay to make a list of users who added a detail to an article? Are you _trying_ to get people doxxed? This is unacceptable behaviour for an admin. I don't feel safe on Wikipedia with admins like you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by BaconMaster2 (talk • contribs) 22:53, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

You do know anyone can click on the "History" page of an article on Wikipedia and see the IPs themselves, right? Sufficientiae (talk) 03:50, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Source request for Seattle

Oliv0, can you supply a link to the source you added here? SarahSV ^(talk) 20:13, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

@SlimVirgin: done. In Seattle Mardi Gras riot it came from, the history of the cite news and of the description was rather chaotic [21] [22] [23], but finally it does not fit too bad. Oliv0 (talk) 23:09, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

@Oliv0: I agree, and thanks for the link. SarahSV ^(talk) 23:13, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Formal Mediation may be needed.

There seems to be some serious [POV pushing] here. The page has been sanitised of any associations of this phenomenon with Islam. This unique type of highly organized group sexual assault was developed by and is practised by members a particular ideology. To remove this fact is dishonest.

It is clear from the talk section, a small group of people are attempting to create a false reality to support their point of view and protect a particular religion from potential criticisms. There is no precedence for allowing this, other articles about sexual assaults with relation to religion exist on Wiki with no sanitation (see the various [Priest Scandal] articles & even the regular Child sexual abuse entry). Wiki is meant to be independent and unbiased.

In addition to continued edit wars, and a refusal to cooperate despite third-party suggestions to do so, this small group is now attempting to intimidate contributors by doxxing any who mention Islam or Middle-East/North Africa in the article. That is not acceptable behaviour at all. I fear that formal Mediation may be needed on this page if those POV pushing do not cease their activities. RemiWasHere (talk) 13:18, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

• If you have evidence that "Taharrush jamai" is unique and specific to Islam, if you have sources showing that it stems from Islamic teaching, please share it with us. Morever, Is this an example of "Taharrush jamai"? Is this an example of "Taharrush jamai"? Is this an example of "Taharrush jamai"? If those are not examples of "Taharrush jamai" committed by non-Muslims and non-Arabs, then what constitutes "Taharrush jamai" according to you? Sufficientiae (talk) 03:51, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

RemiWasHere, no one has been doxxed, and no one is trying to cover anything up. The point is a very simple one, namely that taharrush jamai is just the Arabic phrase for mass sexual harassment. There isn't a special term for "mass sexual harassment by Arabs or Muslims." They don't call it something else when non-Arabs or non-Muslims do it. That's what the recent edits were implying.

In addition, there are no sources showing that mass sexual assault is an Arab or Islamic practice. It is common in Egypt. There are particular reasons for that, partly to do with endemic sexism, partly that women are fighting the sexism, and partly because of other political upheaval. SarahSV ^(talk) 04:57, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

→ Sufficientiae, I refer you to one of the sources used in the article ( Magda, 2013) which describes the phenomenon being labelled Taharrush, as a political tactic employing organised sexual torture by a group of men. The goal is to 'break the will' of their political opponents (Magda,2013) Additional source. Using rape as a weapon of war is found all over the world, what differentiates 'Taharrush' is the use of mass sexual assault by gangs of civilians and or agents of the state (e.g. police) publicly to humiliate political & religious dissenters; it is justified by a narrow puritanical interpretation of Islam.

"Perpetrators act from a belief that they are safe from accountability; that society itself will blame the victim and let the perpetrator free, that the girl and her family will live in shame and prefer silence." [[24]]

The Amnesty International source used in the article also associates hostility toward independent women to "Islamist political parties and movements in the name of religion"4.

The following Quranic verse (33:33) was used in support of the sexual assaults on the women in Tahrir Square:

“And abide in your houses and do not display yourselves as [was] the display of the former times of ignorance.”[[25]]″

This is not to imply that the practice is approved of by the average Muslim any more than the average Catholic approves of Child sexual abuse. Muslim activists are trying hard stop the practice External link. Those who condone it and participate in it however, are using Islamic views of how women should dress and behave to justify it. Therefore, the intentional removal of any and all associations with Islam is, as I stated, dishonest.

Regarding your links, no, I would not consider them examples of what people mean when they refer to Taharrush. Those incidences lack ideological motivation, as well as the belief that they'll be free from punishment for the attack.

Similarly, as I'd not consider the political & religiously motivated sexual torture by groups of civilian and police in Tunisia to be considered Taharrush, as the cases I'm aware of lack the characteristic public and mob aspects that has become associated with Taharrush.

The lack of a known ideological motivation is also why the mass sexual assaults occurring in Europe are only speculated as being an example of Taharrush. They match the organised coordinated mob attacks seen in Tahrir Square, taking place in public and using the crowd to mask the attack, but the motivation is unclear. Although with people like Salafist Sami Abu-Yusuf, an Imam in Cologne, saying things like:

″One of the reasons [why migrants raped the girls] was how they were dressed. If a woman goes out half naked, uses perfume, then such things happen, and man, a woman ... It's like a splash of oil into the fire .... "External Page fuels speculation. RemiWasThere (talk) 01:21, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

→ SlimVirgin, When people are searching for Taharrush on Wiki they are not generally searching for how to say harassment in Arabic. If that was the case this article wouldn't exist. The previous request for deletion was made for that very reason and that request was denied. People are searching for a particular phenomenon that has been given the label Taharrush.

That phenomenon, as shown by the sources already used in the article, has been associated with Islam. So, I re-state, removal of this association is dishonest and biases the article. It is deliberate PoV pushing, and it is discriminatory as no other religions are given that preferential treatment (nor should they). The edit warring must stop. The reasons stated during the vote on why the article exists should be respected. Otherwise there is no choice but to elevate the matter further. RemiWasThere (talk) 01:21, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Taharrush jamai is just the Arabic for "collective harassment." We have an article on Table (furniture), but we don't have a special article on Tisch just because Germans have tables too.

Sometimes, when a cultural practice is very specific, we do host it under the foreign title. For example, we might create an article on Kaffee und Kuchen, which is the German practice of having coffee and cake on Sunday afternoons, and we might argue that we should host it under that title because it is so distinctive.

There are indeed a lot of mass sexual assaults in Egypt, which is why this article is almost entirely about Egypt. But (a) the Egyptians don't have a special word for it; they call it several things. And (b) there is no evidence at all that it's an Arab or Islamic practice, although clearly certain views of women in Islam provide the background. Nevertheless, Egypt ≠ the Arab world or Islam.

If you want to argue otherwise, the onus is on you to produce high-quality sources that predate the confusion of January 2016, or sources that take the confusion into account but argue the case anyway. SarahSV ^(talk) 01:57, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

@RemiWasHere, there is no Quranic verse used that was used as a justification by any of the attackers in Tahrir. That was a comment left on an article. None of the actual recollections given by the victims mention any religious justification as far as I can see. And if the Salafist Imam is responsible, so are the numerous priests who have blamed sexual assaults on women for how they are dressed. Sufficientiae (talk) 03:06, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

Final reply before dispute resolution is sought

The phenomenon Taharrush being a colloquial term for a particular type of sexual abuse has already been supported by the sources already in use in the article. Further, the name change of the article to “Taharrush Jamai” is completley unsupported, the source used to justify this term and change (Fernandez, 2015) doesn't use that term at all, on the contrary Fernandez states: “the most commonly used term is al-taharrush al-ginsy or taharrush” and then proceeds to refer to the phenomenon as “Taharrush” for the majority of the paper.

On the Egyptian Newsite Ahram, Kirollos discusses Taharrush in 2013, explaining that although "Group sexual assaults in public are not a recent phenomenon in Egypt." the name for it is, "The word taharrush (harassment) is a relatively new term in the daily lexicon."

It is not simply Arabic for “harassment” it is used to refer to a particular phenomenon. The only evidence used to justify this argument and name change is from a Huffington Post article—hardly a “high quality source” and certainly not one that outweighs thousands of others. Taharrush and Taharrush Gamea are the most popular terms used, as demonstrated by Google results (Approximately 400k & 300k respectively compared to less than 4k for Jamai, as has already been stated on this Talk page by another contributor). It is the terms used by officials such as German Federal Criminal Police/BKA who states that:

“taharrush gamea” (community sexual harassment) is a phenomenon from "some Arab countries" involving "organised purposeful sexual harassment of women in the public sphere". "The assaults range from sexual harassment to rape", emphasizes the BKA. a similar phenomenon in Germany have not known."

As well as Mainstream Media all over the world for example

• United Kingdom BBC; Daily Mail
• Finland
• Germany
• Poland
• India

"The game is predominantly from Egypt but is also common in other Arab nations"

• Pakistan

“On Twitter, some have taken to describing this as a Muslim tradition, which isn’t true, as Islam doesn’t condone such a thing. But there is no denying that it is taking place at the hands of those of Muslim origin.”

• Russia
• Romania
• Australia

“Strategic public shaming.”

“A middle eastern and North African phenomenon”

• France
• And so on...

I could spend hours listing sources that support Taharrush (and Taharrush Gamea) being a colloquial term for a particular type of sexual abuse, the majority of which relate it to either the Middle East and North African countries or Islam. I understand one may be fan of the Huffington Post, it can be an amusing site, but that site hardly outweighs multitudes of other news sources from across the world.

That said, the Huffpost opinion piece is the only supporting source for the view being wrongfully forced upon this entry—including supporting the entry's name being changed to a rarer and incorrect term. The onus to provide high-quality sources—that actually support what they're being used to support rests on everyone.

That responsibility is not being met by the Entry's current state. In addition to the Fernandez paper not supporting the name change despite being used as the sole source to support it, the secondary supporting source used for the 'misunderstanding/just a word' argument, The BBC article, also makes no mention of that viewpoint. The BBC article doesn't use the term Taharrush Jamai, nor does it state it is a mistranslation, nor does it state that it is just an innocent word being misused. On the contrary, the BBC uses the terms "taharrush gamea" and Taharrush only and refers to it as a “modus operandi”--a particular method.

This misuse of source material to push a particular agenda is rampant in the entry. It needs to be reviewed and opened up for revisions as it is currently locked to all but select contributors. Furthermore, the name needs to be reverted to the original Taharrush Gamea. The current one is obscure and inaccurate, as demonstrated.

Taharrush is not nor should it be treated as generic Mass Sexual Assault. There already exists a category on Wikipedia for Mass Sexual Assaults. Taharrush is its own unique thing, a fact supported by countless sources, a small selection of which are found in both the links here and in the entry. The entire argument against this rests on one provided source, the Huff Post opinion article. Continued attempts to restrict the entry to purely Egypt or broaden to to all Mass Sexual Assaults is an attempt to distort reality by denying the existence of a well documented phenomenon.

Taharrush originates in and occurs most frequently in Egypt, but is not limited to Egypt. The tactic has also been found to be used in other Middle Eastern and North African countries as well as by Muslims outside of that region. As stated in the provided sources above.

The piece in the Tribune (Pakistan) which reiterated what I stated in my previous responses:

“On Twitter, some have taken to describing this as a Muslim tradition, which isn’t true, as Islam doesn’t condone such a thing. But there is no denying that it is taking place at the hands of those of Muslim origin.”

Also refers to the Assault of Saira Khan ( HuffPost (UK) | Daily Mail (UK) | Tribune (Pakistan) ) as being a case of Taharrush Gamea, as well as other incidences occurring in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

In edition to those incidences, and those on NYEs in Germany (Cologne, Berlin, Hamburg, Beilefed, Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, stuttgar, ), Austria (Vienna and Salzburg), and Switzerland, Sweden, and Finland. 1 2 3 Its been suggested a mass sexual assault occurring during a Swedish concert also meets the criteria of Taharrush.

In conclusion,

1. Name needs to be restored to the proper term for the phenomenon: either Taharrush or Taharrush Gamea as there is plenty of support for that and no support for the current obscure term.
2. The article and its sources need to be reviewed. Currently sources are being used to support a particular points of view, however, when those sources are read they do not support that point of view—in fact they often invalidate it.
3. Allow mention that this phenomenon has been widely associated with a particular region and ideology—keeping in mind that association is not causation nor is any implying such.
4. Remove the general incidences (Woodstock, Vietnam, Puerto Rican Parade, etc) that have been added but are not examples of Taharrush, nor do they have any supporting sources referring to them as possible examples of Taharrush.
5. Remove the semi-protected status as it is causing the entry to be invalidated by a select few who seemingly don't want it to exist.

RemiWasThere (talk) 16:43, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Remi, for clarity, it would help if you could list here the sources you're citing that predate January 2016 and that aren't already in the article. SarahSV ^(talk) 23:24, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Other sections

The back and forth about the new sections isn't helpful. The scope of the article is clearly Egypt. If people want to create Mass sexual assault in general, please find reliable sources, including for a history section and a war section. It looks a bit silly to suggest that we can only find half a dozen examples.

Also, examples do not have to mention taharrush jamai or any variation thereof. Many of the sources for Egypt don't mention it; in fact, probably most don't. This article isn't about a term, Arabic or otherwise. If you want to create an article about the term, it would mirror the German approach; see their de:Taharrush gamea, where they explain how the term came to be spread. This isn't that kind of article. SarahSV ^(talk) 02:25, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

I think it would be better to have the "Outside Egypt" section named back to "Events with similar collective harassment" like it used to be. That way events with a similar style of harassment taking place during large events or gatherings can be mentioned in the article itself without going into the larger subject of war time rape for example. Sufficientiae (talk) 04:43, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

Were any of the attacks not carried out by muslim men refereed to as TJ by sources?

If not, that seems like Synthesis. Did anyone call the Puerto Rican Day attack Taharrush jamai? Tex249 (talk) 19:28, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

No, they weren't. Thus are not appropriate and should be removed. RemiWasThere (talk) 01:28, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree, no one has ever called them that. I'll remove. Tex249 (talk) 22:31, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Attacks don't have to be called taharrush jamai or variants. Several attacks in Egypt weren't called that. As several people have explained, this is just the Arabic translation of "collective harassment". Egyptian writers might use that term, or might use some other term. Obviously non-Arab speakers have no reason to use it when describing mass sexual assault elsewhere. SarahSV ^(talk) 22:53, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

They certainly do. Note the title of this article, which has survived a deletion discussion. Unless the attacks are linked to Taharrush by the sources themselves they do not belong here. It's not within our discretion to make connections the sources do not. I support Tex's removal.

If the article were moved to a more generic "mass sexual assault", they become relevant. But that discussion is ongoing. Including them before the discussion concludes is premature. Using their inclusion to justify the move is gratuitous. D.Creish (talk) 23:35, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

The men in Cologne (31 december 2015) were of Moroccon or Algerian origin; the very young men, the boys in Sweden (festival We Are Sthlm) came from Afghanistan. Not the Muslim, the Islam is the problem. Male sexual violence against women is Islamic. It is shariah-compliant education, that leads to taharrush jamai, male (mass) group violence against women in public spaces. The boys or men are not of Japanese, Chinese, Russian, Mexican or Xhosa origin, but have been brought up according to the norms of traditional Islam (Shariah), for example in Afghanistan and now in Sweden: "In 2014 and 2015, 38 incidents of sexual harassment at We Are Sthlm were reported to the police by female visitors at the festival, most of whom were under 15 years of age". Or see here, taharrush jamai in Tunisia: "Die taharrush gamea in Tunis während des sogenannten Arabischen Frühlings fand bei uns wenig Beachtung." http://www.aliceschwarzer.de/artikel/war-die-silvester-terrornacht-organisiert-331391 - Whether in Tunis, Cairo, Kabul, or Dhaka, this group violence is a (by)product of a fundamentalist (maybe just a literalist) islamic gender view respectively a sharia-based upbringing - colliding with our universal human rights resp. cultural modernity. 91.61.217.203 (talk) 17:15, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Some hangings are lynchings. Not all hangings are lynchings. How do we decide the difference? Based on what our sources say.

Some sexual assaults are TJ. Not all sexual assaults are TJ. How do we decide the difference? Based on what our sources say. Tex249 (talk) 21:46, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Is this a general agreement that we should remove all examples that lack a source specifically using the term taharrush jamai? I removed some other recent additions that don't use the term, but the entire "Description" paragraph seems to lack sources tying it to the term, too, so we need to either source it to the term or remove it if we're going to base the article exclusively around the term's usage. I think that more sweeping changes might need to wait until the move request is resolved (since the question seems to be "is this article about mass sexual assault, or is it about the usage of the term 'taharrush jamai'), but obviously if we decide to base the article on the term, we're going to have to scour out everything that isn't directly connected to it, which includes almost everything outside of the "terminology" and "europe" sections (and the Europe section would have to be rewritten to focus exclusively on the police report which coined the term and the ensuing media controversy.) I think it does have to be one or the other, though; you can't remove the US and Vietnam examples because they don't use the term, then leave in the Sweden, Pakistan, India, or Tahrir Square examples, since the term doesn't seem to be used in the sources we have for those, either. --Aquillion (talk) 22:03, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

That's definitely how I view things. I assume that the Swedish/Tahrir examples have been referred to as TJ by a source, but if they have not then I don't think that they should be included. Tex249 (talk) 00:36, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

Generally agreed but more specifically I said above: Unless the attacks are linked to Taharrush by the sources themselves they do not belong here. The link can be direct by classifying them as Taharrush or indirect (as in the sources we have for the Sweden attacks, which I'll restore) by linking them to incidents which other sources classify as Taharrush. Some connection must be made by the sources. This was not the case for India, Pakistan, US or Vietnam as far as I can tell but I'll review the sources. As well I support postponing drastic changes until the RFC close. D.Creish (talk) 01:11, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

All current disagreements seem to stem from the still unsettled choice described by Aquillion above and SlimVirgin below : is this

• an article about the usage of the term "Taharrush gamea", like the German interwiki de:Taharrush gamea describing how it spread in Western media from the German police report to other cases,
• or an article about the modus operandi "Taharrush gamea", defined by the German police and by later news reports as women sexually assaulted by circles of men in a crowd that does not intervene (with a section about the various opinions on whether it is due to an Arabic or fundamentalist Islamic background or to too high a proportion of males among asylum seekers, or whether drunk or sexually frustrated crowds have always done such things, etc.) ?

So let this choice be made first, and then work can be done. Oliv0 (talk) 10:28, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

I think this article should be about women being sexually assaulted by crowds. There is enough evidence to suggest this is not something unique or a distinct phenomenon to certain regions of the world, it can be found all over. Hence the article should be renamed to the English translation of the term or changed to Mass Sexual Harassment/Assault with a section on what it is called in Arabic. If this is merely to be an article on the Arabic term for such harassment, a lot of the page will have to go as the sources do not specifically mention Taharrush Jamai Sufficientiae (talk) 16:05, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

Mass sexual assault v sexual assault within a crowd

Sufficientiae, be careful not to confuse isolated episodes of sexual assault within a crowd as "mass sexual assault". When women are assaulted on the London Underground (a fairly regular occurrence), that isn't mass sexual assault; that's one man taking advantage of a crowded situation.

Mass sexual assault is when the crowd itself turns on a woman, or a significant portion of it does, usually accompanied by bystanders not helping enough, not helping at all, or taking part. SarahSV ^(talk) 04:49, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

This is indeed another aspect which distinguishes Taharrush jamai from other forms of group sexual assault--it's a group sexual assault within a crowd which is complicit, and helps to hide the sexual assault by massing around it and/or helping to move the victim and attackers within the crowd. The crowd also often amorphously takes part, with crowd members joining the group of attackers to grope etc., and then moving back out into the larger crowd. This is very clear from most of the videos of the phenomenon, and distinguishes it from any form of sexual assault common in the West.96.241.136.57 (talk) 01:46, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for bringing that to my attention. Are there any parts I added to the article that fall outside of the definition? Sufficientiae (talk) 04:51, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

The new sections you added need sources, and some of them wander into areas that aren't connected to mass sexual assault. I'd want to see how the sources describe those incidents. Don't rely on the Wikipedia articles, because they may not have described them properly. SarahSV ^(talk) 04:59, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

I see. Would you consider the following sources to be appropriate to add to the article:

• The Guardian: NY police 'ignored' park sex attacks
• Slate: The Central Park Rampage

• SeattlePI: Looking back: Mardi Gras riots of 2001

• Washington Post: Police Investigate Reports of Rapes at Woodstock
• Huffington Post: Woodstock '99: Riots, Rapes and the Razing of the Alt-Revolution
• New York Times: 4 Rapes Reported At Woodstock, State Police Say
• CNN: Police investigate alleged rapes at Woodstock '99
• Salon: Woodstock 99: Three days of peace, love and rape

Also, I think if a large enough part of the crowd actively becomes hostile and people start to get assaulted, that would fall under such harassment, no? I'm new to editing on Wikipedia, so please bear with me Sufficientiae (talk) 05:36, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Yes, there's no cut-off point, so it's a matter of judgment: how many women were assaulted, how many men were involved, how long it lasted, and so on. The best thing is to find sources that use "mass sexual assault" or similar terms: crowd sexual assault, mob sexual assault, and so on. I'll look at the sources when I have time. SarahSV ^(talk) 05:52, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

→ Please be mindful that this entry is for the phenomenon Tahrrush and not generic Mass Sexual Assault Mass sexual assault, which has its own category already. None of these links are appropriate. Nor are the Woodstock 1999, Puerto Rican Day Parade attacks and Seattle Mardi Gras riot, an Vietnam incidences listed. They should be removed.RemiWasThere (talk) 01:27, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

@RemiWasThere: The subject of the article is perfectly well defined in its first sentence: "the sexual assault of women in public by large groups of men" is what taharrush gamea/jamai refers to in English, so all cases of mass sexual assault in a crowd belong here. Oliv0 (talk) 18:51, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

If I'm following correctly, the sequence of events is as follows: (1) Incidents not explicitly connected to Taharrush are added. (2) These additions are used to argue the article is not about Taharrush. That doesn't make sense.

I see no mention of "Taharrush" in the sources for United_States or Vietnam. Without an explicit connection they must be removed - including them would be synthesis. RemiWasThere and DHeyward have explained quite clearly and with sources why this is a distinct phenomenon.

I'm reading the sources in #Final_reply_before_dispute_resolution_is_sought now which appear to settle the naming specifics, e.g. Gamea vs Jamai. Great research Remi, thanks. D.Creish (talk) 20:46, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

They have not actually explained quite clearly why this is a distinct phenomenon. The responses to their assertions bear that out. Sufficientiae (talk) 15:43, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

Requested move 1 February 2016

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Taharrush jamai → Mass sexual assault in Egypt –

It appears that the German police made a mistake in January 2016 when they described "a practice in Arab countries known as 'taharrush gameâ' (collective sexual harassment in crowds)." It was a mistake not only of transliteration (it is apparently more accurate to transliterate this as taharrush jamai). It was also a mistake to describe it as something that occurs in Arab countries.

There has been a practice in Egypt since 2005 where women have been subjected to mass sexual assault by crowds during political protests and religious festivals: 500 cases were recorded there between June 2012 and June 2014. Taharrush jamai is just one of the phrases Egyptians use to describe these attacks.

But there is no such practice in other Arab countries that I can find. Hosting the article under an Arabic title gives the impression that there is something distinctively Arabic about this. Another editor argued that it would be like the Arabic Wikipedia hosting their article on school shootings under "School shootings," as though there is something distinctively English about that.

I therefore propose that this be moved to Mass sexual assault in Egypt (currently a redirect), which is the focus of the sources and the article. The New York Times has used the phrase "mass sexual assault" to describe these attacks. The only part of the content that will have to change to accommodate the new title is the first paragraph.

References

SarahSV ^(talk) 20:03, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

• Support as nominator. SarahSV ^(talk) 06:21, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

"Mass sexual assault" from the NYT sounds good, and without "in Egypt" it would include "incidents in Europe" not only as a "Comparison" in the section title, and maybe also other places (in India there may have been mass assaults worse than "Eve teasing" harassment, like for punishment but I could not find right now where I saw it on Wikipedia). Oliv0 (talk) 07:41, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Oliv0, if you can find sources about this outside Egypt, by all means post them, but all the sources I've found discuss this in terms of Egypt, so that's the focus of the article. SarahSV ^(talk) 20:26, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Also in terms of Europe, it seems? (In India maybe this case is what I remembered, but I agree that a punishment is a different sociological process.) Oliv0 (talk) 07:26, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

@SlimVirgin: Other than Germany, there seem to have been similar group sexual assaults against a feminist demonstration during the Tunisian Revolution according to this description (in French, 1st § after "Réminiscences"). In fact, if the subject is not limited to Egypt, Arabs or Muslims but defined as group sexual assault in the middle of a crowd that does not intervene, a Google search shows this is a pretty universal phenomenon, found in China, Vietnam or even the US. Oliv0 (talk) 07:28, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

@Oliv0: the blog post is quoting Marieme Helie Lucas. We would need a good secondary source for it. If you want to pursue it, you could write to Lucas and ask for her sources. It's the same for any other claim; we can't use sources like ministryoftofu.com. I couldn't see it in the US source you cited. The source about Vietnam is good. SarahSV ^(talk) 21:02, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

The Vietnam source is now in the article. SarahSV ^(talk) 06:21, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

I saw the link for the US above in a Google search that showed the sentence "The most frequent harassment she has to deal with at punk and hardcore shows is men pulling her shirt down in the crowd" which may be group harassment in a crowd, though not at the same level. Oliv0 (talk) 07:33, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Oliv0, if you want to create an article on Mass sexual assault, you'll have to find academic and high-quality news sources. You'll have to decide whether to include war, because if you do the topic is massive. If not, do you include political upheaval; if so, it's still big. So: lots of decisions and lots of reading. I haven't done that research (and don't intend to), so this article is currently limited in scope to Mass sexual assault in Egypt, with a postscript about a few events in other countries, which ideally would be moved to a Mass sexual assault article if that is ever written. For now, given the actual content of this article, the choice of title is between Taharrush jamai or Mass sexual assault in Egypt. And Taharrush jamai isn't widely used that I can see, so the latter seems to be the obvious choice. SarahSV ^(talk) 04:31, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

• No - it has been discussed here before, why not. Zezen (talk) 15:19, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose This has been discussed before, and nothing significantly has changed as it relates to that discussion. Rekov (talk) 16:43, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

That's not true; three things have changed. First, we have more coverage of the fact that the initial usage of the term by German papers was a mistranslation. Second, we have a lot more coverage that hasn't used the term, which suggests that it is not the WP:COMMONNAME -- in fact, it seems to have entirely vanished after the initial error. Third, this proposal is to move it to a better (and, I think, more obvious) target. Especially given that several of the comments on the last discussion seem to have been "wait and see", and several others were clearly by people not aware that the initial usage of the term in German was due to a translation error, it seems logical to move the page now. --Aquillion (talk) 05:56, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

• Support The current article content is about Mass sexual assault in Egypt, and there haven't been any sources that demonstrate that the latinized Arabic term has gained traction as a loanword. For one thing, it's spelled many different ways.--GRuban (talk) 22:52, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
• Comment. I've informed GGTF, WikiProject Women, WikiProject Egypt, WikiProject Germany, and NPOVN. I can't think of other appropriate ones, but anyone should feel free to inform other groups too. SarahSV ^(talk) 22:56, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
• Strong support. Going over the sources, it doesn't look like the term has any special meaning in English or Arabic (outside of maybe being a very brief neologism following the error mentioned above); and that "Mass sexual assault" is probably the WP:COMMONNAME. Even the "terminology and background" section, which one would expect to cover it, only mentions the German error briefly at the end, without any indication that it has any real currency even as a neologism. EDIT: After reviewing the sources, almost none of them use it, fullstop. As far as I can tell, its use with any specific meaning beyond just being the Arab term for 'group assault' is entirely a neologism dating to the error by the German police mentioned above. --Aquillion (talk) 05:52, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose. For many of the reasons detailed in the last requested moveon January 22nd, most importantly that this is the term used by a significant majority reliable sources. When/if that changes, a move should be considered. D.Creish (talk) 06:15, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
  • Can you list the "majority" of sources you feel use this term, so we can weigh them against the ones that don't? I strongly disagree with the assertion that this is even used by a significant number of them. Going over the sources for this article, very few use it; and of the few that do, it's rarely used prominently or as a catchall term with a specific meaning the way it's used here (as opposed to eg. a passing mention that it's an Arabic term for sexual assault.) It definitely is not used by anything approaching a majority of them. It appears to be a neologism coined as a result of a mistranslation by one German report (almost all the references that do exist only refer to that report, and only in passing; but even those secondhand references are sparse relative to the vastly larger body of coverage that does not use the term.) For example, the Amnesty International coverage of the Tahrir Square assaults -- which are extremely detailed and serve as the article's main sources, as far as I can tell -- make no mention of the term whatsoever. --Aquillion (talk) 07:45, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

• The spelling of "jamai" varies (and is sometimes left off) but a search shows the following outlets using some variation:

• Daily Mail
• RT
• BBC
• Huffpost
• AOL
• NY Times

That may change. I don't have any attachment to the term beyond what or where readers expect to find it. D.Creish (talk) 21:52, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

All but one of those are just quoting the one German police report that seems to have accidentally coined this neologism, though; and two of them are just opinion pieces. All of them also only mention it in passing. Do you have any sources that predate the mistranslated police report? Or any sources discussing the term in-depth, independent of it? And even if we count all of them, that's still a tiny minority of the 57 sources currently on the article. It's clear that the term isn't the WP:COMMONNAME for eg. the Tahrir square assaults in this case (none of the sources seem to use it in relation to them prior to the error by the German police), yet descriptions of those assaults make up the bulk of the article. --Aquillion (talk) 23:03, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Entire articles on WP only exist because one source got copied by the usual gang dimwitted bloggers and turned into 25 identical opinion pieces. This doesn't change the fact that words are defined by use. Not to mention that this phenomenon is not isolated to Egypt, which makes this particular move suggestion even more off the mark. Rekov (talk) 01:22, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

This is absolutely true. After all, the entire Gamergate fiasco is an example of this, and one with Aquillion appears to be familiar with. Perhaps for the sake of these articles we stop bickering because of ideology, but considering this recent wave of edits I don't see that happening anytime soon. Sethyre (talk) 02:34, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

• That's... not true. Per WP:NEO, neologisms have to have significant independent coverage before we can use them. Words are defined by use, but for new terms like this one, we wait until there is significant usage outside of that one source, rather than immediately making an article about a term because it occurred in one reportand a few blog posts responding to it. And you haven't answered the main problem, which is that this is absolutely not the WP:COMMONNAME for the sort of sexual assault that the article describes, even in Egypt; the vast majority of sources make no mention of it. It occurs only in a bare handful of articles after the German error, and generally only in a passing mention -- the academic sources on harassment (which go into far more depth) don't use it at all. This is not a term with any evidence of meaningful usage. --Aquillion (talk) 03:56, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose move. This is a specific phenomenon with regional, cultural and religious significance. Sanitizing it into English misses the entire phenomena. It would be like moving Hajj to Pilgrimage or Bris to Circumcision. Many cultures have pilgrimages and circumcision but that doesn't mean specific and significant practices need to be merged into English because someone is offended that they are tied to a culture or identity. This phenomena cannot adequately be covered in translation and should therefore retain its name so that the phenomena specific to Islam, Arabic and Egyptian communities is preserved as the phenomena that it is. --DHeyward (talk) 03:36, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

• DHeyward, this article is about mass sexual assault in Egypt. There's no indication that it's a "phenomena specific to Islam [and] Arabic ... communities" too. I have searched for sources dicussing this outside Egypt and (not counting war) I can't find any. If you have sources, please post them. SarahSV ^(talk) 04:02, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

• The source I listed two sections down talks about regional use of the term. Egypt (North Africa in general?) uses the term in context with sexual assault of women (in public, semi-public settings), Saudia Arabia (and Gulf states) seem to use the term in the context of child rape/molestation within the home. In addition, the meaning has grown over time so there are generational differences. It has a broad meaning with regional and generational differences. --DHeyward (talk) 04:31, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

• DHeyward, can you post here what the source says that takes this phenomenon (the mass sexual assault) beyond Egypt? SarahSV ^(talk) 05:03, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

• "Kohl: A Journal for Body and Gender Research Vol. 1, No. 1 (Summer 2015)" pg. 30 discusses the term as it extends beyond local Egyptian emphasis and can mean different types of assaults (the main term being "Taharrush"). In addition some of the Egyptian generational differences use a "blame the victim" approach to use a different term for what happens to a woman without a Hijab. From that source, a young girl raped in her home by a family member in Saudi Arabia would be a Taharrush victim due to regional use of the term. Similarly a western woman without a Hijab that is gang raped in Eqypt would be considered a Taharrush victim by younger/progressive/activist Egyptians but not necessarily by older Egyptians (and even less so if the sexual harassment is verbal - progressives make no distinction in language). As that paper did, I think we can explain it in English but the word itself ties into a lot of religious and cultural norms. If we adopted a purely western approach and described its evolution along the same lines as "rape", "date rape", "sexual harassment", I think we lose some of the regional deviations and religious influence such as the hijab. --DHeyward (talk) 05:33, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

• @DHeyward: taharrush just means harassment. This article isn't about harassment or about a term. It's about mass sexual assault by crowds. If you want to argue that mass sexual assault is happening elsewhere in the Arab or Islamic world, you need a source that says that. SarahSV ^(talk) 05:42, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

• Read the source "Reconceptualizing Sexual Harassment in Egypt: A Longitudinal Assessment of el-Taharrush el-Ginsy in Arabic Online Forums and Anti-Sexual Harassment Activism." We are not a dictionary and the word taharrush is used differently in different regions, different generations and different context. The abstract alone shows that activists in Egypt specifically chose the word to describe harassment because it had overtones of sexual abuse and is why older generations questioned it. It has very broad use, not just "harassment." Child Molestation/Rape – This code represented more than half of the conversations that revolved aroun del-taḥarrush el-ginsy across the region.... with particular reference to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, the assault on children by domestic employees, such as drivers and maids. El- taḥarrush el-ginsy in this context was viewed as both a violation of children’s bodies, but also an act with devastating consequences for children.This was especially the case for the molestation and rape of young boys and Sexual Harassment of Women – This was also a prevalent theme in discussions of el-taḥarrush el-ginsy, representing almost half of the posts region-wide, and about two-thirds of the posts from Egypt. and There were divergent trends in the discussion on women, focused both on sexual abuse at home and work, and sexual harassment in public settings, especially in the street or on transportation. In Egypt, the majority of posts focused on women’s public sexual harassment, mostly described as physical in nature, including touching, rubbing, and groping. However, verbal harassment that was vulgar and sexual in orientation also arose in online conversations. Individuals contested the role of dress in promoting sexual harassment, with many placing the blame on women for going out without the minimal protection of hijab. This isn't a general article article on gang rape. It's about peculiarly Arabic and Islamic attacks and harassment of women and children and the evolution of women's rights. There is disagreement even among Egyptians especially across generations. The same evolution of the word "rape" has happened in Western culture. I doubt we would say date rape or acquaintance rape doesn't belong in the "rape" article because 3 generations ago it wasn't considered rape. Nor would we leave out the evolution of campaigns such as "No means no" and more recently "Yes means yes." By changing this term into English, we would miss the cultural revolution in North Africa and the Gulf States as well as the debate regarding religious garments like the Hijab. The debate and evolution of the word along with the culture is an important distinction. Like the word "bris" just means circumcision so why have a separate article? The reason is the religious and cultural significance goes beyond a simple translation. The evolution of the word "taḥarrush" would be akin to equating sexual harassment to sexual assault and then using "sexual assault" to describe everything from assault to cat calls. That's what activists did with the language in Eqypt and why it's divisive today. --DHeyward (talk) 12:33, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

• Any talk about dress does not make this a religious or cultural issue. Women in the West are also blamed for provoking sexual harassment, assault, and rape because of they way they are dressed, for example. Does that make sexual harassment, assault, and rape in the West a religious and cultural issue too? Just like the blame is laid on women in the West due to their clothing, other parts of the world also lay the blame on women and how they dress when it comes to sexual harassment, assault, and rape. In the end, taharrush is literally the Arabic word for harassment. Taharrush jamai is the Arabic term for "collective harassment". Taharrush al-jinsy is the Arabic term for sexual harassment. Just because Arab speaking people discuss that kind of harassment and assault in their native tongue, does not mean that it means anything other than harassment. Sufficientiae (talk) 05:40, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

Sufficientiae, this discussion (and well done article) is not on taharrush jinsi, but on taharrush jamai, male (mass) group violence against women in public spaces. The boys or men are not of Japanese, Chinese, Russian, Mexican or Xhosa origin, but have been brought up according to the norms of traditional Islam (Sharia), for example in Afghanistan and now in Sweden: "In 2014 and 2015, 38 incidents of sexual harassment at We Are Sthlm were reported to the police by female visitors at the festival, most of whom were under 15 years of age". Or see here, taharrush jamai in Tunisia: "Die taharrush gamea in Tunis während des sogenannten Arabischen Frühlings fand bei uns wenig Beachtung." http://www.aliceschwarzer.de/artikel/war-die-silvester-terrornacht-organisiert-331391 - I entirely agree with DHeyward: "This is a specific phenomenon with regional, cultural and religious significance. [...] This phenomena cannot adequately be covered in translation and should therefore retain its name so that the phenomena specific to Islam, Arabic and Egyptian communities is preserved as the phenomena that it is." - Indeed, whether in Tunis, Cairo, Kabul, or Dhaka, this group violence is a (by)product of a fundamentalist (maybe just a literalist) islamic gender view respectively a sharia-based upbringing - colliding with our universal human rights resp. cultural modernity. Me too, I vote for: Oppose move. 79.251.66.65 (talk) 05:12, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

• Note: 79.251.66.65 has also opposed below as 79.251.67.85. SarahSV ^(talk) 22:36, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

• Sorry for tl;dr version. Cliff Notes version: Egypt was/(is now? dunno) generally more progressive than the Gulf states. There was a lot more activism regarding women's rights. One of the goals of the movement was to eliminate public sexual harassment and the requirement for the hijab. To do this, they chose to call public sexual harassment "taḥarrush" to shame those who did it with a very strong term used for sexual assault. As can be seen from other Arabic cultures as well as some reactions in Egypt, that word is associated with sexual assault including sexual assault of children. Its use as "harassment" is recent and deliberate and effective. In Egypt, the word is now very broad, encompassing assault and harassment and the campaign was successful. It is not, however, universal in that broad meaning and still is associated only with sexual assault in other Arabic speaking countries - and older Egyptians haven't adopted its general meaning. --DHeyward (talk) 13:09, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

• DHeyward, that source doesn't say anything about mass sexual assault outside Egypt. This article isn't about a word. It isn't about harassment or sexual harassment or sexual assault or rape, which happen everywhere in the world. It's about mass sexual assault, where women are sexually assaulted by crowds or by large groups of men within crowds. There is nothing in the source you cited that suggests this is a feature of Arab or Islamic culture; the source offers no examples of it outside Egypt and doesn't mention anyone discussing it outside Egypt. If you believe the source supports what you're saying, please quote a sentence that suggests it. SarahSV ^(talk) 19:22, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

• the article is about "taharrush" which includes sexual assaults in public and sexual assault in private depending on use and culture. In Egypt, the term has been expanded to include sexual harassment. But this article didn't stop being about the overarching islamic cultural phenomena of taharrush because you translated it to mean just "harassment." I quoted above multiple meanings from child rape to mass sexual assault across different countries. The CBS reporter that was gang raped in egypt was a victim of "taharrush" . The assaults in Germany were examples of taharrush. Child rape in Audi Arabia is an example of taharrush. When they argue that the victim is to blame and they use a word that means "flirting" it doesn't diminish the rape defined under taharrush. I've quoted numerous passages showing the meaning of "taharrush" so are you proposing splitting off the specific rapes in Egypt from the overall concept of Taharrush in Islamic and Arabic culture? When the argument is that women that refuse to wear hijab, they are inviting taharrush by bands of man celebrating Eid, it's a very specific cultural norm. Circumcision happens all over the world in many cultures and religions. A "Bris" is specific. You seem to be saying something similar to this article is about "male circumcision in Israel, not a Bris" which makes absolutely no sense. Gang rapes happen all over the world. "Taharrush" is specifically Arabic and Islamic in origin and includes a number of types of sexual assaults including gang rapes but it's inspired by arabic and islamic culture and uses terms that are more than a translation. The first clue is that the word itself is controversial in Arab countries. I quoted it extensively above. --21:59, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

• DHeyward, you have said that "mass sexual assault," or taharrush jamai, is a "phenomena specific to Islam [and] Arabic ... communities." You have said that it has "religious significance." If you are going to say things like that, you need a very good source to support it. The source you are citing says nothing like that. If you believe it does, you have misunderstood it. SarahSV ^(talk) 22:14, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

• Of course it's specific to the language and culture. In Egypt, the battle is over the word "muʿāksa" vs. "taharrush." I've quoted the source but you give no rebuttal, just nonsensical misunderstanding. It's ludicrous to claim the struggle for women's rights in Egypt and the Muslim and Arabic world is comparable to the struggle in the west. It seems you are trying to create a worldwide equivalence of the status of women in various culture is equivalent. That's false. Those sources define the language of debate and in Egypt they started to use a stronger word to describe rape and that word, meaning "harassment" replaced the word for flirting. Egypt is on the cutting edge and is confronting unwanted sexual touching as "harassment" whereas Saudi Arabia relegates such behavior to describing child rape (i.e. if the touching isn't child rape, it's the fault of the woman). That status of the word "taharrush" in Egypt says unwanted sexual touching is "harassment" and is not "flirting" that the woman is engaged in especially if she isn't wearing religious clothing (this is exactly what the source says and is exactly the battle that took place to use "taharrush" as the word to describe it). Saudi Arabia reserves Taharrush for the rape of a child in a safe environment like the home - public groping isn't a crime or "taharrush." The West calls unwanted sexual touching a sex crime and sexual assault (i.e. it would be outrageous to say sex crimes were civil matters in the west rather than criminal ones - but Egypt needs to take baby steps and calling gang rape "harrassment" is on the cutting edge in Islamic countries - they are literally arguing with people that say sexual assault isn't "unwanted" or they would be wearing a hijab). You are being rather obtuse in trying to shoehorn many cultures that each have different attitudes toward women's rights into a myopic western view. The treatment of women in Egypt, the Gulf States and Islamic countries is vastly different than the west and varies greatly within each country. Egypt is relatively progressive and the activists that bravely started calling "muʿāksa" what it is - rape and "taharrush" - should be encouraged, not shouted down by obtuse western writers trying to portray the practice as something that happens everywhere. Really, we should be focusing on the Islamic countries that still call gang rapes the result of "flirtations" and non-hijab wearing women and also pointing out that gang rape in those countries is the legal equivalent of a rude comment in the workplace. The West is working on making "yes means yes" violations of decency a crime while Islam and Arabic states struggle to make gang rape a civilly liable action. The attitude towards womens rights are not close and the language and terms such as "taharrush" and "muʿāksa". --DHeyward (talk) 08:47, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

• Here's a few questions: 1) What is the translation of "Taharrush Jamai"? 2) What is the Arabic word for rape? 3a) Is this an example of "Taharrush jamai"? 3b) Is this an example of "Taharrush jamai"? 3c) Is this an example of "Taharrush jamai"? 4) If those are not examples of "Taharrush jamai" committed by non-Muslims and non-Arabs, then what constitutes "Taharrush jamai" according to you? Sufficientiae (talk) 09:57, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

• PB&J isn't a panino and the average American household (with 3.14 persons) isn't a "household of three." Literal translations aren't meaningful in these instances without context, which the source DHeyward refers to above [26] provides. D.Creish (talk) 23:25, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

• The source DHeyward is talking about specifically mentions that the research was done by Googling the Arabic terms that would be used in online Egyptian discussion boards. Unless we expect Arabic forums to discuss things in English, they were going to use terms in their own native tongue to discuss issues relating to sexual assault and rape etc. Just because the report is in English and is referring to an term in the Arab language that was used in Arabic discussion because the subjects being researched were in Arabic, does not mean "taharrush jamai" is something specific to the Arab or Muslim world, nor does it mean that it cannot be properly translated. If this were true, then research in English about school shootings would mean that school shootings should be considered something specific to the culture of English speaking nations or the US. And such a concept is just plain silly Sufficientiae (talk) 23:48, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

• In Egypt, Tahrrus was recently applied by women's rights activists to men who engaged in "harassment", in addition to rape (I doubt western cultures would call it harrasment, just rape). Previously, groping, and unwanted sexual touching in Egypt (and elsewhere) was blamed on women flirting. The broadening of the use of the word in Egypt wasn't done to legitimize or westernize their actions - it was a baby step to shift accountability to men because Tahrrush puts the blame on the actor. They don't even call it "rape" in Egypt, though it is obviously rape in western cultures - they claim Tahrrush now includes rape and lesser acts of harassment (Egyptian culture has a backlash against calling it Tahrrush as it is so they had to soften it to harassment). Tahrrush in Gulf countries that don't recognize that these public acts against women are the fault of men, reserve Taharrush to be violent rapes of women, girls and boys in private. The problem is that as long as acts in Islamic states avoid being called "taharrush", it's not going to be viewed as a problem. Activists in Egypt didn't choose the word arbitarily, they chose it specifically and it resonated in debate with conservatives rejecting the idea that unwanted, public, sexual touching of a woman without a hijab could possibly be described in the same way child victims of rape are described. It's specific to Islam and Arab culture and they don't care what western words are used nor are events in other cultures equivalent. Language is a slippery slope when trying to relate cultural norms. For example, we could have an article called "Military crusades in the middle east" and we could look for dict defs for "crusade" but it would entirely miss the significance of term in a middle east context. Same for words like Fatwa, Hajj and Jihad. Would you call catholic restriction on abortion a Fatwa? Or a trip to Spain to follow the path of an apostle (or a patronage trip to Anne Frank's house), a Hajj or the Chinese invasion of Tibet a Jihad? The answer is the same as the answer to sexual attacks in other cultures: No, the term relates to phenomena in Islamic and Arab cultures and deserves its own treatment. --DHeyward (talk) 03:21, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

• The paper itself says it is about: "This paper examines shifting conceptualizations of sexual harassment, or el-taḥarrush el-ginsy, in Egypt." The paper's subject is sexual harassment. Sexual assault, rape, etc. fall under that sort of harassment. For example, legislation dealing with a variety of sexual offences in the UK is titled the Sexual Offences Act 2003, which includes offences such as assault and rape. It also includes child molestation and a variety of other sexual offences. They are all gathered under the banner of sexual offences, just like sexual offences in the Arab blogosophere are talked about under the banner of such harassment and assaults. The paper then says: "Through longitudinal data from online Arabic discussion boards and blog sites, as well as insights from interviews and participant observation of anti-sexual harassment organizations, it explores the range of meanings evident in the use of the term taḥarrush..." If one were to examine the online discussion around the Cologne assaults in English forums, for example, one would find such discussion to be conducted under threads titled "Cologne attacks" or "Cologne assaults", even though those attacks included sexual assault and rape. So to say that because they talked about "taharrush al jinsy" and "taharrush" when they talked about offences such as rape and child molestation means that "taharrush" is something completely alien to non-Islamic and non-Arab culture and something completely new, is false. As for conservatives rejecting the idea that "taharrush" exists and is instead "flirtation", this is nothing new. We have studies and reports in the West and other non-Arab and non-Islamic cultures and regions showing that what may legally be considered sexual harassment, sexual assault, or rape, is not considered so by everyone, because they do not consider such acts to be as severe as law deems them to be. The older generation or the conservative generation in Egypt considers what is sexual harassment not something as severe as sexual harassment. That is the issue the report talks about. It does not classify sexual harassment and taharrush as being something completely different. Taharrush was used as a banner of discussion for various forms of harassment, with the priority being sexual harassment and assault under "taharrush al jinsy". And finally: Is this an example of "Taharrush jamai"? Is this an example of "Taharrush jamai"? Is this an example of "Taharrush jamai"? If those are not examples of "Taharrush jamai" committed by non-Muslims and non-Arabs, then what constitutes "Taharrush jamai" according to you? Sufficientiae (talk) 03:47, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

• Support Unless there is a source explaining how these cases of sexual harassment/assault described as taharrush jamai are qualitatively different from mob sexual harassment/assault in other parts of the world, I don't see why this needs to use a foreign term. From what I have been reading in the sources, taharrush jamai is not the proper name of a ritual or institution, nor is it an Arabic phrase that has entered the English lexicon; it is simply the Arabic term for something not unique to the Arab world.Torven (talk) 05:22, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
• Strong support. Why should we have pages with Arabic titles when the same terms for a crime can be found in English as well? Is this the Arabic or English version of Wikipedia? This is not some phenomenon that is exclusive to any one area, let alone the Middle-East or North Africa Sufficientiae (talk) 10:33, 6 February 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose move. Sorry, Sufficientiae, I can`t agree ("This is not some phenomenon that is exclusive to any one area"). Without an upbringing of the boys and / or men according to the misogyny of Sharia (Hadith; Fatwa; Sharia Laws), Taharrush jamai wouldn`t exist. Male superiority is not an amazing islamic coincidence, but result of consistent application of the normativity of Quran and Sunna (just read some ahadith or fatawa, or Imam al-Ghazali ("The woman is man's slave and her duty therefore is absolute obedience to the husband in all that he asks of her person.")], or Abu'l-Faraj ibn al-Jawzi (Chapter 60, for instance, bears the astonishing title: "On placing women in fear of sin and instructing them that they make up most inmates of hell". In it we find: "It is delivered from Jabir: 'God's envoy spoke to the women: "Give alms, as most of you are the firewood of hell." A woman with dark-dyed hands from among the women stood up and asked him: "Why, envoy of God?" He answered: "Because you multiply evil or are always cursing and ungrateful to your husbands."'")). -- The Taharrush jamai is very closely related to the doctrines of hijab (حجاب, veil)‎, and Wali (ولي‎, male guardian; optional even wali mujbir). - "Mass sexual assault in Egypt" (Egypt!) would not fit the system / concept Taharrush gamea, the still very young aggressors of We are Sthlm (summer 2014; summer 2015) had been brought up in Afghanistan, the young men of the of the Cologne New Year's Eve sexual assaults originate from Morocco and Algeria, fewer from Iraq (and not a single one from Egypt). 79.251.67.85 (talk) 06:06, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

• If you can find proper sources saying "taharrush" is something other than harassment, that it is a unique practice and custom stemming from Islamic religious teaching, then by all means, go ahead and share it with us. Moreover: Is this an example of "Taharrush jamai"? Is this an example of "Taharrush jamai"? Is this an example of "Taharrush jamai"? If those are not examples of "Taharrush jamai" committed by non-Muslims and non-Arabs, then what constitutes "Taharrush jamai" according to you? Sufficientiae (talk) 03:47, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose This is no longer an Egyptian phenomenon. Tex249 (talk) 19:45, 9 February 2016 (UTC)
• Support: I demand that a new article called Mass sexual assault be made on the phenomenon itself in general, while this article is renamed Mass sexual assault in Egypt to refer to the phenomenon specifically in Egypt. Zakawer (talk) 12:12, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
• Support as explained above by the proponent SlimVirgin: the subject now includes a few events in countries other than Egypt and can be split later into sexual violence in Egypt (like the well-built de:Sexuelle Gewalt in Ägypten) and crowd sexual assault in general. Oliv0 (talk) 14:54, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
• Strong Support explained perfectly in the previous edits. Alexis Ivanov (talk) 17:34, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
• Strong Oppose The entry is for a unique phenomenon. The article needs work to undo the attempts to invalidate it, but it should continue to stand alone. The name should also be reverted back or Taharrush or Taharrush Gamea as the latest name is inaccurate and unsupported see this section for more info.RemiWasThere (talk) 18:44, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
• Strong oppose This is not the same a other forms of sexual assault. Juno (talk) 05:21, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

• Hi Juno, in case you've misunderstood, the proposal is to move it to Mass sexual assault in Egypt, which is the scope of the article. You're right that it's not like other forms of sexual assault; it's very distinctive and brutal, and lots of high-quality sources have written about it. I believe other editors are also considering creating Mass sexual assault as a parent article to cover the same kinds of attacks outside Egypt, though the sources for that (outside war) are currently sparse. SarahSV ^(talk) 05:57, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Many women in Europe were not attacked sexually, but "only" beaten or robbed. In addition, this specific variety of assault had happened in Europe. Why only Egypt? My very best wishes (talk) 04:12, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

• Support renaming to English language, either "Mass sexual assault" and/or "Mass sexual assault in Egypt". There is no need to have a article title when there is a clear English language description. Also it would be, at best, in a grey area for NPOV, by implying it is strictly a Arab thing. Preferred option is "Mass sexual assault" (with a section on Egypt, origins, spreading, etc.). "Mass sexual assault in Egypt" makes less sense, apparently this arises because of a surge in Germany, which conclusively proves it does not happen only in Egypt. (I doubt anyone would propose "Mass sexual assault by <nationality OR ethnicity>". So, unless we eventually get a series of "Mass sexual assault in <country>" I presume we better of by now with plain "Mass sexual assault". - Nabla (talk) 20:52, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

• Nabla, thanks for your comment. This article is almost entirely about mass sexual assault in Egypt. Very few examples have been found outside Egypt (not counting wartime sexual violence), and the sources are poor. That doesn't mean there aren't good examples and sources out there, but they need to be collected. Almost all the secondary sources in the article discuss it in the context of Egypt, where it's a distinctive and regular occurrence. That's why I've proposed moving this to Mass sexual assault in Egypt. A series of articles about "Mass sexual assault in <country>" wouldn't be appropriate because it's a distinctive feature only of Egyptian society, and only since 2005 (that I have found so far).
  If other editors want to create an artice on mass sexual assault in general, I would suggest they open Draft: Mass sexual assault and start collecting examples so that there are a decent number before the article goes live. SarahSV ^(talk) 21:08, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

• SarahSV, I don't mind the "... in Egypt" option, my main point is to use a English title. I note that you are giving yet an extra case of (kind of) mass sexual assault, not in Egypt, with wartime sexual violence. So my image of a 'perfect' outcome in the long term id to have a central article about mass sexual assault, with large sections split out - namely in Egypt, on wartime, in Germany/Europe...? If we get there by top-down (splitting) or bottom-up (summary-style) editing is a much smaller issue. - Nabla (talk)

• Nabla, I agree completely. Mass sexual assault as a parent article (a daughter of Sexual assault), with sections about particular issues and examples, and daughter articles (e.g. Wartime sexual violence, Mass sexual assault in Egypt, New Year's Eve sexual assaults in Germany) presented summary-style. SarahSV ^(talk) 22:24, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose for the following reasons:

1. That had happened not only in Egypt, but most notably in Europe and other places.
2. This particular variety of assault is not necessarily sexual. Many women in Europe were only beaten and robed. Yes, this is a gender-oriented assault, but not necessarily of sexual nature. My very best wishes (talk) 03:59, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Closing

Because this is a contentious and sensitive topic, I've requested that an admin close it. SarahSV ^(talk) 22:49, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Circle of hell

Drmies, a minor thing, but "circle of hell" is what women in Egypt have called it. See, e.g. Guardian: "We call it the circle of hell," said [Soraya] Bahgat who herself narrowly escaped assault this week." Bahgat is a women's rights advocate and co-founder of Tahrir Bodyguard, one of the groups that rescues women. SarahSV ^(talk) 03:38, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

• Sarah, the sources cited in that footnote don't support it. If you want to reinstate the phrasing (I saw something about the same topic in Archive 1, I think), that's fine--but you can't use a source that says "Activists" and then have the article say "Women in Egypt". Thanks, Drmies (talk) 03:50, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

• We had to add quotes to the footnote because people were trying to remove the phrase, but in fact there are lots of sources, so probably the best thing is to remove that quote in case it gives the wrong impression.

The activists Amnesty refers to are women's groups in Egypt and the groups that try to rescue the women from the attacks; see "Circles of Hell: Domestic, Public and State Violence Against Women in Egypt", Amnesty International, January 2015. SarahSV ^(talk) 03:58, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

• @Drmies: And I see you have closed the wretched RM. Thank you! SarahSV ^(talk) 04:02, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

I believe that it should be renamed in English to Sexual Jihad. Canadian-niceguy — Preceding unsigned comment added by 154.20.129.124 (talk) 01:29, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

"Mass sexual assaults in Egypt outside Egypt"?

This does not make sense. Egyptians would not want to be "blamed" for things happening outside their country, where the perpetrators are not even of Egyptian descent. A much better solution than this is required. The first question to be asked is whether this is counted as unwanted/criminal activity in every country - if yes, it becomes a question of crime and/or degrees of thuggish behaviour that may or may not be prevalent in a country, if not, it would qualify as culture. The second question is whether any scholarly sources has covered the alleged cultural phenomena or cultural differences in an honest manner - newspapers sometimes lack the accuracy required to be useful on sensitive issues, the third question is how relevant information can be conveyed by an encyclopedia. Narssarssuaq (talk) 18:47, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

Taharrush

Does anyone pretend that Taharrush only happens in Egypt?

This inaccuracy is not just wrong, it is morally wrong, and an insult to other victims of Taharrush. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.51.88.239 (talk) 04:42, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

Who changed the title from Taharrush?

Here is a New York Times story about such attacks outside of Egypt: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/03/10/world/europe/cologne-police-detain-2-suspects-in-new-years-eve-attacks.html?_r=0 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.51.88.239 (talk) 05:21, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

The general article about mass sexual assault/taharrush is now here: Mass sexual assault. Oliv0 (talk) 07:10, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

European cities are not in Egypt

A series of assaults in European cities are not connected by being situated in Egypt, obviously, but by the use of the term Taharrush jamai, that's why the section has been moved there. --89.204.154.11 (talk) 14:10, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

Taharrush jamai redirects here, do you mean moving the section "Comparisons to attacks outside Egypt" to Mass sexual assault? Mass sexual assault could be developed, but the debate about the European use of the Egyptian phrase "taharrush gamea" seems to be useful here. Oliv0 (talk) 08:48, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

How can we let this happen?

Why was the fact that Taharrush is started by muslim men scrubbed from the page? there have been zero cases of non-muslim men taking part in this horrific act, yet some unseen entity is removing vital information in the name of being politically correct. Taharrush is performed by men of muslim religion and that fact should not be hidden from the people. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Camdoodlebop (talk • contribs) 03:56, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

The greatest systemic NPOV breach in Wikipedia history.

Even the involvement of a Wikipedia admin in terrorism and the lockerbie bombing didn't get this level of overt corruption and systemic censorship. I openly challenge those involved in this to excuse themselves from editing Wikipedia. You are blinded by your angenda, and have ceased to contribute to the project but hinder it. This is the most disgusting example of corruption I have ever seen and I have been here since Wikipedia's first months of operation. Shame on you, every single one of you who keeps censoring, deleting, and reverting this page and it's talk page.

I have NEVER seen the arbitration committee openly threaten Wikipedians before. I have never seen a talk page kept intentionally censored to blank. This is a lot of firsts for me. What on earth are you doing? Stop and think. This is not what an encyclopedia is about. This is NOT what Wikipedia has ever been about. Wikipedia is about presenting FACTS and REALITY not fiction and politics. It's about providing a politically neutral view that records history--for the first time in history--without the corrupting elements of emotional contamination from one's politics, religion, or other agendas.

And yet here we are. With the worst example I have ever seen of suppression of the mass sexual violence that women have to face, taharrush gamea has been 'disappeared' off of Wikipedia and melded into this one heavily censored and controlled article. The moral and ethical horror of that very act is mind numbing. The systemic mass sexual assault and rape of tens of thousands of women across the globe is an acceptable loss for your political agenda? If you have taken part in this you are not a Wikipedian, you are not even a human being. The level of corruption requisite in this is appalling, and I ask you to stand down and relinquish editorial control to the Wikipedians who do not have a political agenda in this matter and who serve the purpose of truth and accurate encyclopedic notation of factual events. Agendabender (talk) 04:37, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

External links modified (January 2018)

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 3 external links on Mass sexual assault in Egypt. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20160113193756/http://gsrc-mena.org/kohl/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Reconceptualizing-Sexual-Harassment-in-Egypt.pdf to http://gsrc-mena.org/kohl/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Reconceptualizing-Sexual-Harassment-in-Egypt.pdf
• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20160320140359/http://egypt.unfpa.org/Images/Publication/2010_03/6eeeb05a-3040-42d2-9e1c-2bd2e1ac8cac.pdf to http://egypt.unfpa.org/Images/Publication/2010_03/6eeeb05a-3040-42d2-9e1c-2bd2e1ac8cac.pdf
• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20160113153727/http://www.madamasr.com/ar/node/2410 to http://www.madamasr.com/ar/node/2410

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