Talk:Mary Kahil

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by AirshipJungleman29 talk 12:04, 1 July 2025 (UTC)

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• ... that Mary Kahil, an Egyptian Christian mystic, was a cofounder of the country's first feminist movement and codirected an Islamic charity?

• Source: Keryell, Jacques (2010). Mary Kahîl: une grande dame d'Égypte: 1889-1979. Paris: Geuthner. p. 12: "En 1920, elle rentre au Caire et participe activement à la fondation du Mouvement de l'Union féministe égyptienne avec Houda Chaaraoui. Elle travaille comme secrétaire et animatrice dans l'œuvre musulmane de bienfaisance 'Mohammed Ali'."

• • Reviewed:
  • Comment: No further comment—I think I have everything lined up and there shouldn't be any hiccups with sourcing.

Created by M.A.Spinn (talk). Number of QPQs required: 0. Nominator has fewer than 5 past nominations.

M.A.Spinn (talk) 02:17, 11 June 2025 (UTC).

• An easy pass. Long enough, new enough, and well sourced. Clears NPEOPLE (it looks like English sources aren't that prevalent). The hook is interesting and appropriately sourced. No copyright concerns observed. I don't have access to Moore 2021, but I get the sense "intimate" isn't being used euphemistically. Glad to see another fun article by M.A.Spinn on the crossroads of 20th-century Islam and Christianity. ~ Pbritti (talk) 13:03, 24 June 2025 (UTC)
  • @M.A.Spinn and Pbritti: I don't see where the article says that the movement was Egypt's first? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 15:08, 24 June 2025 (UTC)
    • @AirshipJungleman29: It's cited in Keryell 2010, which is the source for the claim. If "first" is too strong a word "one of Egypt's earliest" would work. M.A.Spinn (talk) 20:20, 24 June 2025 (UTC)
      • Still needs to be in the article. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 20:28, 24 June 2025 (UTC)
        • @AirshipJungleman29: I found a monograph on Huda Shaarawi which has the relevant information. I'm currently tracking down the best citation within said monograph and will edit the article to resolve the issue. M.A.Spinn (talk) 20:55, 24 June 2025 (UTC)
          • @AirshipJungleman29 and Pbritti: To be more precise, what if we changed the hook to "was a cofounder of one of the earliest organized women's movements in the Arab world" since that's what is least ambiguous and most verifiable? As far as I can tell it is in fact the oldest in Egypt but verifying that directly is tricky in this moment. M.A.Spinn (talk) 21:47, 24 June 2025 (UTC)
    • @Pbritti: Not a euphemism, although my private scholarly opinion (WP:ORIGINALRESEARCH) is there was perhaps a strongly codependent aspect to their correspondence which seems to have come at the cost of straining Massignon's marriage. Moore 2021 does also mention there is no evidence of anything sexual (though given Louis Massignon's homosexuality it was unlikely to come up). M.A.Spinn (talk) 20:20, 24 June 2025 (UTC)

@M.A.Spinn: Please ping me once you have rectified the issue observed by AirshipJungleman29. Best, ~ Pbritti (talk) 21:08, 24 June 2025 (UTC)

@Pbritti: Consider yourself pinged. M.A.Spinn (talk) 21:26, 24 June 2025 (UTC)

• M.A.Spinn has proposed as ALT1 the following:
  • ... that Mary Kahil, an Egyptian Christian mystic, was a cofounder of one of the earliest organized women's movements in the Arab world and codirected an Islamic charity?
• ALT1 is approved. ~ Pbritti (talk) 15:40, 25 June 2025 (UTC)

Suffering in relationship with Massignon?

Wonderful article on a dynamic woman! As a novice to the topic, though, I wondered why Kahil's relationship with Massignon, though intimate, was a source of mutual suffering? Was it because they disagreed? Or shared in a mutual sorrow? I wonder if a sentence or word clarifying this might help. Oneripeapple (talk) 16:34, 10 July 2025 (UTC)

I can go back to the source and draw out the details later. But my scholarly opinion is they had codependency issues and the nature of their work required both regular contact but also strict boundaries and neither party were the most functional people in the world. M.A.Spinn (talk) 19:07, 10 July 2025 (UTC)