Talk:Fareed Zakaria

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Contents 1 Heritage? 2 POV 3 Could someone 4 related to Ms. Tabassum Zakaria? 5 Muslim identity 6 Birthplace 7 controversy 8 Fareed drinks Alcohol - why does this fact keep getting deleted? 9 The "Views" section 10 The "Criticisms" section

[edit] Heritage?

Is the phrase 'of Muslim heritage' appropriate in referring to the religion of his parents or ancestors? One doesn't generally hear of those from Christian families being 'of Lutheran heritage' or 'of Catholic heritage'. Indeed, is he a practicing Muslim? Are his parents? His wife & children? -Grammaticus Repairo 19:34, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Do we mention the religion of every noted political commentator, or just the Muslims?

[edit] POV

• "The unapologetic elitism he advocates for might stem from his well-to-do background."

^^^Does that line from the article sound blatantly biased to anyone else, or is it just me? --67.213.105.252 00:47, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Could someone

• Could someone add some information about his beliefs, opinions, controversial positions, chief interests, etc.? Brutannica 05:55, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

You are wasting your time asking other people to write the article, as I have argued time and again, no one pays attention to the talk page in regards to adding information. I have rarely, if ever had one wikipedian add something or change something that another wikipedian asks on a talk board.Travb

[edit] related to Ms. Tabassum Zakaria?

• Does anyone know if the subject is at all related to Ms. Tabassum Zakaria, a Reuters reporter who has done a fair amount of coverage on U.S. intelligence issues? Folajimi 18:53, 31 December 2005 (UTC)^(talk)

How about Al-Jazeera's Yamin Zakaria? Folajimi^(talk)

What subject, what are you talking about?Travb 09:42, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

The word 'subject' refers, in this case, to the person (Fareed Zakaria) on whom the article reports. -Grammaticus Repairo 19:02, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Muslim identity

Why is there a compelling need to constantly delete information related to Fareed's Muslim identity? Dothivalla

Because this "policing" of Muslims based on whether they drink alcohol, etc. is precisely the kind of Taliban-style attitude that is repugnant in a free society. Zakaria has never claimed to be an observant Muslim. It's irrelvent whether or not he srinks alcohol.

Did someone bring up something about him drinking alcohol? I must have missed that... -Grammaticus Repairo 05:52, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Birthplace

Where in India was he born? State/City? Montie02

[edit] controversy

Anybody feel like citing http://salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2006/09/26/newsweek/index.html and Zakaria's sexism? --moof 10:53, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

While rather rude and certainly inappropriate for a professional journalist, my take on the information presented in the article is that his apparent disdainful and dismissive attitude was not directed at her because she of her gender, but because of the particular publication she represents. I would imagine that an inquiry by a male journalist from Playboy might have achieved somewhat similar results. I suspect that there are many mainstream 'news' journalists that, though I doubt they would admit to doing so, look down on writers from publications they consider 'less than serious'. Still, just because he thinks it doesn't mean he needs to express it verbally. Just my thoughts. -Grammaticus Repairo 19:51, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Salon isn't a solely reliable news source, got to have more.--Exander 07:01, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't doubt it. I'm not familiar with 'salon.com'. Does it have any kind of reputation (aside from just being 'liberal')? Perhaps it is on a journalistic level similiar to that of 'Glamour'? ;) -Grammaticus Repairo 22:35, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Fareed drinks Alcohol - why does this fact keep getting deleted?

Here's a part that keeps getting deleted from this article:

Although many westerners describe Fareed as a "Harvard Educated conservative Muslim" [1], as Slate Magazine's wine columnist [2], Fareed openly ignored Islam's prohibition on drinking alcohol [3]. Fareed has weighed in on his Muslim identity several times, most recently telling the Village Voice, "I'm not a religious guy[4]."

The person who's deleting it, can you please care to expain why you're doing this? --Matt57 02:32, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Although I'm not the one who keeps removing it, it does seems out of place here, both because of its position in the article and because of the brevity of the material. I don't think it would be inappropriate to include some mention of his religious views, but I think we need to include more information than this. If additional information is not available, and these few somewhat disjointed statements are the best we can come up with, then I think we could do without them. Just having these trivia-like tidbits tacked certainly does not make the article seem NPOV. -Grammaticus Repairo 07:13, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

I finally got around to actually reading the source for the quote (from the "myhero.com" website) and discovered that the quote itself seems to have been edited so that its meaning is altered. The wiki article quote reads "Harvard Educated conservative Muslim", while the actual quote from the cited source is "Harvard-educated, politically conservative Muslim". Subtly different, but different nonetheless. This 'paragraph' needs to be rewritten or deleted. Personally, I don't think the information about his so-called 'Muslim identity' needs to be deleted, per se, but I feel some better sources really should be cited. This information could also stand to be better integrated into the rest of the article than it is currently. I do find myself wondering, though, what is the purpose of specifically discussing his consumption of alcohol with reference to Islam? What exactly are we trying to imply about him? There certainly seems to be some sort of bias at work here... -Grammaticus Repairo 09:00, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

The village voice quote rather implies he's not a Muslim, and shouldn't be in the 'American Muslims' category... Hippo X 21:01, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

I fully agree that he should not be on such a list. I should note, though, that there are actually about half a dozen different wikipedia 'Muslim' lists on which he presently appears, and he probably ought to be removed from all of them (excepting perhaps the "List of Muslim reformers"). That is, unless someone can provide a link to a credible source that he is indeed a practicing Muslim (a request which I have made before, I might add). -Grammaticus Repairo 17:44, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The "Views" section

The views section of this article is entirely unencyclopedic. Pat Buchannan is a critic of George W. Bush, but does this mean he has moved to the "left"? It is entirely POV. I thought of deleting it entirely, but thought better of it for now. If it doesn't change from an opinion about Zakaria's views to something more verifiable, then it will get deleted soon.--Thomas.macmillan 00:04, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

How is the Views section "entirely unencyclopedic"? The first and last paragraphs certainly need some work, but the five paragraphs in the middle are farily well-written. Aside from needing to have more sources listed, I can't really see anything wrong with the majority of this section. I would agree, however, that the two sentences in the first paragraph ("He was a conservative during the 1980s but has moved left since. (His columns have been mostly critical of George W. Bush and his administration.)) are certainly POV, and appear intended to cast Zakaria in as liberal a light as possible. I would agree that they should be removed if a reliable source cannot be cited to confirm that this is the majority view of the history of his politics. Even then, it could certainly stand to be reworded. -Grammaticus Repairo 21:00, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The "Criticisms" section

While I welcome the creation of a 'criticisms' section, the initial content added by the section's creator is not written appropriately for Wikipedia. The first sentence is clearly biassed against Mr. Zakaria. His "writings" do not "find their way in[to] popular U.S. magazines such as Newsweek". He's a columnist/contributing editor of Newsweek and writes a weekly column for the magazine, which is sometimes reprinted in the Washington Post.

Second, apart from the introductory 'paragraph', which consists of one sentence and is written in an unencyclopedic manner, the entire entry is a quote taken directly from an article by Dr. Kaveh Farrokh. If the information contained in such a lengthy quote is relevant for inclusion in the article, the information should be summarized and the author of the quote should be referenced. The quote should not reprinted in its entirety.

Finally we come to the 'meat' of the entry, which is relevancy. In my opinion, an expert such as Mr. Zakaria ought to (and probably does) know that ethnic Iranians are Persians, not Arabs, and, as a journalist, should not, either implicitly or explicitly, lead readers to believe otherwise. However, given that Mr. Zakaria is a journalist who primarily writes what are essentially 'op-ed' articles, and is not (and, as far as I know, does not claim to be) an expert in Persian culture like Dr. Farrokh, it is difficult to accept this criticism as being truly relevant to the subjects on which Mr. Zakaria routinely espouses his viewpoint. The reference to the inventors of algebra is particularly irrelevant. The criticisms presented are certainly not enough, in and of themselves, to characterize Zakaria's articles as "inaccurate" or "misleading".

I feel that all of the 'criticism' presented in this section (which, in my opinion, remains of dubious value) should be either summarized with 1-2 sentences and a link to Dr. Farrokh's article or removed completely. What does everyone else think? -Grammaticus Repairo 23:02, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

It might not be relevant to a reader of Anglo Saxon origin who might not see a big difference between ethnic Persians and Arabs. However, to readers who have a worldly view and do not stereotype and naively group people into one ethnic group simply because of geographic proximity, it makes a huge difference and is considered to be a clear example of academic mediocrity. For the Reader of Anglo Saxon origin, I wonder if it would be relevant to you if say a Newsweek article written by a so called "expert" referred to the United States as a Spanish nation, even though the U.S. proportionately has many more Spanish speakers and ethnic Latin Americans than Iran has Arabic Speaker and ethnic Arabs. If this so called expert knew that Iran is not an Arab nation just like the United States is not a Spanish nation, he then should not be receiving awards for his misinforming writings. Also I like to point out that you are committing a fallacy by saying Iranians are Persians. That would be analogous to saying, Americans are European or of British Heritage. It is true that the Majority of Iranians are of Persian stock, but there are many different ethnicities that make up the total Iranian population.

I'm afraid I must take issue with your assertion that I "stereotype and naively group people into one ethnic group simply because of geographic proximity" just because I don't dismiss Fareed Zakaria's articles as "inaccurate" or "misleading", as well as your assumption that I am a "Reader of Anglo Saxon origin". But that is neither here nor there. I reviewed Zakaria's "Why They Hate Us" and "How To Save The Arab World" articles and discovered that nowhere in their texts is Iran described as "Arab". Iran is discussed both articles, of course, as it would hardly be appropriate to write an article concerning the influence of radical Islam that excludes states that are relevant to the discussion. Such states include many which are not considered part of the "Arab World", like Israel, Turkey, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. In fact, in a particular paragraph in "Why They Hate Us", Zakaria makes mention of "Arab regimes", yet when writing about the last Shah of Iran a few sentences later, Zakaria specifically describes him as a "Middle Eastern ruler".

After re-reading the quotation you referenced from Dr. Farrokh's article, it would appear that the argument supporting Zakaria's supposed "inaccurate" or "deliberate" portrayal of Iranians as "Arabs" is based on a map of the "Arab World" printed in Newsweek along with his "Why They Hate Us" article. I could not find an online reprinting of the entire article as it appeared in the print magazine (that is, one that included pictures and illustrations), so I will have to assume that there was a map of the Middle East with the "Arab World" states highlighted (probably similar to wikipedia's [5]), which included an erroneously highlighted Iran. Though he surely wrote the text of the article, I doubt very much that Zakaria himself created (or even chose for inclusion) this map of the region. It was likely added (along, I'm sure, with numerous photos that were neither taken nor captioned by Zakaria) for illustrative purposes when the final layout was assembled, which was almost certainly not done by Zakaria. In fact, the only the text of the articles appears as pages on Zakaria's website. No maps, photos or other illustrations are displayed, save for the Newsweek logo and the cover of the magazine in which one of the articles appeared. Given this, it is hardly reasonable to take Zakaria to task for not including a demographic summary of Middle Eastern nations in his article.

What this boils down to is that I think the "Criticism" paragraphs you added to the article, even if summarized and brought more in line with Wikipedia's standards on encyclopedic content, represent neither valid nor significant criticisms of Zakaria's articles/views, and, as such, are not worth including in the wiki article. -Grammaticus Repairo 18:04, 19 February 2007 (UTC)