Talk:Mecca

Why is Mecca offensive to Muslims? Adam Bishop 17:06, 20 Sep 2003 (UTC)

That is explained in the article. Do you think it needs more detail?

Click here for more info: http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=mecca+makkah+spelling

Anjouli 15:48, 22 Sep 2003 (UTC)

No, that's fine, I must have missed that when I read it originally :) Adam Bishop 04:03, 26 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I do often feel grateful for the cultural maturity of Italians, that they don't insist that English speakers call Florence 'Firenze.' In an English sentence, these 'correct' spellings of Koran or Mecca look preposterously pretentious to any educated native speaker of English. This is not an opinion, merely a cultural artifact that can't be helped. User:Wetman.

What ever happened to the "use common names" rule? RickK 03:17, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Nothing happened to it; nor is there any caveat for some point of view regarding "offensiveness." I'm moving the page back where it belongs, based in no small part on the "what links here" section. - Hephaestos 03:23, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I agree with RickK, there's a simple issue of practicality here. With the search feature as it is, how is any normal user ever going to find Mecca, if they must spell it, 'Makkah'?

But there's a cultural point, frankly. Imagine an educated American, quite literate in Arabic, dictating to native Arabic speakers the 'correct' way to transliterate 'Washington' in Arabic? They would recognize the American for a buffoon. And if he got 'offended' when they laughed at him, they would know him for a jackass. And they would be quite right. Is that not true? How could anyone disagree with that?User:Wetman

Uh, there is a caveat regarding "offensiveness" in our common name naming convention. That is why the article about the native Canadian people is at Inuit and not Eskimo. The only real question before us is; 'Is "Mecca" so unreasonably offensive to Muslims to warrant the lower Google rank of this page and thus fewer eyes reading it, by having it at a less common name?' --mav

If so, I suspect this faction would go into an absolute tizzy if someone opened a distillery which sold "Makkah Whiskey" (and possibly try to change the English transliteration of the city's name yet again?) - Hephaestos 04:43, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Your remarks about Whiskey are VERY OFFENSIVE. We are not a faction. We are a major world religion. We honor other religions (The Qu'ran says we must). Please keep your racist hatred to yourself. Abdurahman 12:30, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Dear Abdurahman, i'm sorry to intrude, but i dont think Hephaestos intention was offensive. He was just trying, perhaps with a clumsy irony, to ask if Muslims are going to change the Holy City name, every time a ignorant occidental uses it for a non-worthy commercial intention, like whiskey. Until now, i was not aware that Mecca is an insult to your religion and i'm sure that many people ignore this fact. Thats not being racist: we are just not aware... All the best, Muriel 12:55, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Bless you for being a peacemaker Muriel, but the effect was certainly offensive if not the intention. Would calling the Jews a 'faction' or referring to a product called Synagogue Pork be inoffensive to a Jew? I think not. I'm sure Hephaestos can speak for himself if he wants to apologise. 195.238.50.252 14:01, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

If this is going to be at Mecca, should Kyiv be moved (or moved back) to Kiev? Kyiv is more true to the original, I guess, but no one spells it like that in English. Adam Bishop 02:01, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I would say so, yes. In my view the main thing should be "most common term used in English" which "Mecca" is, and as far as I know so is "Kiev". Terms like "Eskimo" aren't in the same circumstance, as updated terms have already been adopted into the English language off-Wikipedia. (Encarta's entry for "Eskimo," for example, simply says "see Inuit.") Same thing with Calcutta/Kolkata. I think as much as possible we should be keeping in line with other modern (i.e., not 1911 or even 1991) English-language references on the matter of names. - Hephaestos 02:21, 4 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I think most of you are missing the point entirely. This is not at all the same as 'Firenze' and 'Florence'. Italians do not find 'Florence' grossly offensive.

With the greatest of respect, I think it is very harmful to the credibility of Wikipedia if people use terms like buffoon in talk pages. Can we discuss this politely please?

Regarding links and search pages, 'Mecca' still forwarded to 'Makkah' the last time I looked. And since when was Wikipedia just for 'Americans' (many of whom are Muslim)? Insisting on 'Mecca' leaves Wikipedia open to claims of cultural imperialism and alienates millions of people.

Are any of the people expressing opinions here actually Muslim? Bearing in mind the current tensions in the world, it might be better if people spent more time trying to understand other religions and cultures, rather than offending them. Anjouli 06:04, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Just letting you know - there is a heated debate in Japanese wikipedia as well regarding the title of this article. The choice is between something like mekka and makka (spelled, of course, with Japanese alphabet). We have quite different naming conventions at ja. We also have different language-environment (some part of scholarly publications moving towards Mekkah from Mecca) while mass media seem remain Mecca. But we would be paying attention to, and hopefully benefiting from, the discussion here. Tomos 02:41, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I'm a Muslim and I find Mecca VERY offensive. I was please to see it was corrected recently to Makkah - but now I see somebody (presumably a White American Christian Conservative Male) has put it back. Why on earth would anybody want to do that except to cause deliberate offence?

The 'Mecca' links worked fine. Is putting 'Mecca' before rather than after 'Makkah' such a bit deal? If this gets posted on an Islamic bulletin board (not by me!) you are going to have 'Muslim' idiots attacking and vandalising Wikipedia. A miniscule minority of 'Muslim' terrorists has done quite enough damage to my religion as it is, without you trying to stir up more hatred thank you. Is Wikipedia going to go back to calling Black people 'colored' (or worse) just because somebody wants to retain older terminology?

This seems to have gotten WAY out of hand...If it is a problem to the Muslim community to have it called Makkah rather than Mecca than why not have TWO separate pages or the Makkah page have a link on it to the Mecca (or vice versa)...I mean, we are taking this from a POV to philosophical and religious (even though it somewhat is religious) realms...I mean come on...in most English encyclopedias it would be referenced under Mecca. But there must be SOME way to have BOTH parties be happy in this situation without making it a HUGE debate or even to lead to RACIST or RELIGIOUS name calling!

To Anjouli, this isn't a question about Americans but about English speaking people. As Mav has noted, there is currently nothing in the Naming conventions that says an exception should be made to the "most commonly used name" rule based on degree of offensiveness. (Err... sorry, but there is. Please see my post below. Anjouli 13:41, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)) I don't think you'll deny that Mecca is the most commonly used name among English speaking people. I, for one, see no reason why an exception should be made.

To the anon IP above, you could probably help your cause by being err.. less passionate, shall we say? In particular, if Muslim "idiots" were to start vandalizing wikipedia, we would simply revert those edits, don't you think?

OK, consider this: if I came here by googling for "Mecca", then I'd read the article and know that the word is offensive to some people. But if it had been moved to "Makkah", then I would never have come here, and would still remain ignorant of the fact. Which do you think is better? (I'm just illustrating the most common name rule and trying to argue that it should take precedence over offensiveness.)

And your analogy isn't quite correct. As you have yourself said, we don't use older terms just because some people want to use them. In this case, however, most people want to use the older term, and have never even heard of the newer term. That's precisely why we use the older term. Note that "most people" means "most English speakers", because this is the English wikipedia. Other language wikipedias, of course, are free to have their own rules.

And BTW, when you start a new paragraph which is meant to be indented, you should start it with a ':' as well. -- Arvindn 12:46, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I see it's been moved back. To quote from the guidelines:

"Move wars" are highly unproductive, and leave vast numbers of pointless redirects littering the place, which some poor soul will have to fix. keep your cool: don't engage in move wars.

and...

Also, some terms are in common usage but are unreasonably offensive to large groups of people (Eskimo, Black American and Mormon Church, for example). In those cases use widely known alternatives (Inuit, African-American, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, for example).

A little research on Google (not to mention this Talk page) shows that many Muslims clearly find Mecca 'unreasonably offensive' and that with 147,000 Google hits, Makkah is clearly a 'widely known alternative'.

I think the present page meets the guidelines and certainly that there should not be any further moves without discussing the matter. Hope you agree.

By the way, Inuit has 383,000 Google hits and Eskimo 579,000 - so there is an example here to follow. (Mecca has 744,000 but many of those are not related to the City.)

I'm neither Muslim nor Christian and have no vested interest here - so I hope I have managed to maintain a NPOV on this. Anjouli 13:35, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I actually find myself agreeing with this person. "Move wars" are unproductive and to a point immature. If you search for Mecca and it takes you to a page called Makkah...just have a little note at the top that explains that Muslims refer to what non-Muslims call Mecca. How hard is this and why would anyone have any problems with this...it would be the same as Jesus of Nazareth redirecting to what Christians call Jesus Christ...Come on people!

If the only reason this article was moved back to "Makkah" is that it struck some people as offensive being named "Mecca", then I submit I find it offensive that it is located at "Makkah" and will continue to remain offended until it is moved back to "Mecca". - Hephaestos 23:54, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC) (One more thing, I don't think I'm alone in finding it offensive when some Internet troll yells at me in all caps, but I'll let that one slide.)

Hephaestos, I agree on polite discussion rather than yelling in caps. But I do also think we should discuss this rationally, instead of people indulging in a 'move war' to impose their individual point of view. It would also be nice if whoever moved the page back announced it here. Otherwise it all looks a bit sneaky. Personally, I think "Makkah' meets the usage guidelines best - but since people are ignoring the 'move war' guideline, I guess they will ignore the 'offensiveness' one too. Anjouli 06:19, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Just a small remark: at my former university, department of Islamic studies, everyone, Muslim or non-Muslim, said and wrote Mecca (except when transcribing arabic texts). All literature spells it Mecca, too. So, no offense meant, it's a question of being overly politically correct when using Makkah (btw, the "h" - at least in the German-Arabic transcription system - is not written). --elian

Hi Elian. Thanks for weighing-in with a reasoned argument. Yes, that's probably quite true of a few years ago. Same thing with Eskimo, Peking etc. But it's changed now. If I might declare my credentials (I don't usually) but I am an American Professor of Religious Studies living in the Middle East. I am neither a Moslem nor a Christian and have no vested interest in this matter. I can assure you that 'Mecca' absolutely is offensive the the majority of Muslims and that the new spelling is used in almost all new publications. I do wish people would learn to understand and respect each other's religions, particularly what each finds offensive (even if it seems trivial to an outsider). I think I'll duck-out of this argument now as everybody seems to be ignoring the guidelines. I find that distressing. I wish we could just take a vote on it, but there seems to be no mechanism for that. Do the right thing guys. Anjouli 06:19, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

The right thing has been done. Mecca is the name in English. It is not Wikipedia's job to try to change people's minds on things, but to describe things as they are. Case closed. RickK 06:21, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)