The Daily Mail, Taharrush (collective sexual harrassment) and Wikipedia
Someone who is well versed in Wikipedia, please help.
Recently, there have been reports that the Cologne mass sexual assaults, which I commented on here, are something called "taharrush", and they are supposedly an Arab/Muslim thing. Or, at least, that is what the right-wing UK newspaper, The Daily Mail would like you to think. Whether or not it is true, or right to associate it causally with certain groups of people is another matter.
I am interested in this. I skim read the Daily Mail article and learnt that CBS reporter Lara Logan was famously subjected to this whilst reporting from Tahrir Square in Cairo during the Egyptian chapter of the Arab Spring. As the DM states:
There remains debate about what defines 'taharrush' - some still insist it is a reference to flirting - though scholars argue its definition changed after the attacks seen in Egypt from 2011 onwards.
German authorities have stated this was the phenomenon seen in Cologne city centre on New Year, when hundreds of women reported they were sexually assaulted.
The practice is only carried out in public and almost always at demonstrations or large public gatherings where the attackers find safety in numbers and disorder.
The Arab phenomenon first came to the attention of the Western world when South African reporter Lara Logan, working for CBS, was set upon by a large group of men while reporting on celebrations in Tahrir Square, Egypt, in 2011.
Logan recounted her ordeal in Egypt several months later on a 60 Minutes broadcast, describing how the baying crowd 'raped me with their hands'.
The 44-year-old revealed terrifying details of the 40 minute-long February attack in Cairo's Tahrir Square, including how she became separated from members of her crew after someone in the frenzied 200-strong crowd shouted 'Let's take her pants off.'
So I Googled "taharrush" and came to the Wiki page. In it, there was an entry under occurrence:
Occurrence[edit]Arab and Muslim world[edit]
Taharrush jamaʿi is said to have originated in Muslim majority countries of the Arab and non-Arab world, particularly Egypt. Victims include foreign and local females, including both women and girls. Among local victims whose religious background is Muslim, it has been reported that the perpetrators assulted their victims irrespective of whether the victim is veiled or unveiled, "with Jadaliyya reporting that large groups of men attacked both veiled and unveiled women during holiday festivities following Ramadan in 2006".[5][verification needed]
The phenomenon first came to the attention of Western media after an instance of an Egyptian taharrush jama'i attack hit headlines when a prominent female foreigner, CBSreporter Lara Logan, was assulted by hundreds of men in Cairo's Tahrir Square during her reporting of the Egyptian Revolution of 2011.[6]
Now, that hyperlink, reference 6, sends you to the Daily Mail article, which has only just been written (yesterday). In fact, every reference was retrieved yesterday.
I am wondering whether the DM, and its reporters, both create a news article and the reference material and sources to go with it, to create a more supposedly "properly sourced" story. In effect, there appears to be some sort of circle-jerk affair whereby there is an insidiousness to the claims they make.
I am not rubbishing their claims per se, but there is certainly something very dodgy going on. Anyone with a wiki username who can research this for me would be great. Was this whole Wiki page created on the behest of the DM? It certainly looks that way. the coincidence of timing, both being written on the same day, is alarming, and one must wonder whether Wiki is being abused and manipulated.
Addendum - there is a dispute on the wiki page:
Which certainly adds to the doubts...
EDIT: Again, I am not really calling the claims into question. I am really interested in this idea that a newspaper produces an article, and on the same day a wikipedia page is created and sources teh very article which the paper produces. There is some circularity to what is going on, perhaps, whereby the newspapers are possibly involved in the production of the wikipedia pages.