Talk:Shi'ite Crescent

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Islam This article is within the scope of WikiProject Islam, an attempt to build a comprehensive guide to Islam on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit this article, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion. If you are new to editing Wikipedia visit the welcome page so as to become familiar with the guidelines.
Stub This article has been rated as Stub-class on the quality scale.
??? This article has not yet received a rating on the importance scale.
This article is supported by the Shi'a Islam task force. (with unknown importance)

This map and the whole article looks like Original research. It does not even reflect the fact that Azerbaijan is Shia and Iran is all Shia, not just the part shown here. What "Half Moon"??? ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 14:52, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

When u showed the links, u can see this term is used by a big german encyclopaedia, called Brockhaus. Brockhaus is in the area of the german language the same like Encyclopædia Britannica is in the english language, so it was in the german wiki said, it's no original research, but the term not so much used. I show u the link to the german disucssion. --134.147.73.137 14:44, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

How do I recommend this article for deletion? One person's categorization does not make this knowledge valuable of an encyclopedia. The categorization has not caught on with academia, and if it has, there is no evidence of that in this article.

In Germany it is used also in public media and in academic articles. If you see the literature it's written there in german, as a title for an article which uses in a political science journal. So in german academic area it is really used. --Japan01 02:51, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, it was the original title "Shia halfmoon" literally translated from German that was confusing us, since that term is not used in English... this seems to be resolved now that the page is at the correct English term... ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 03:10, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
I was looking in some papers but i didn't found the term in english journals so I used a 1:1 translation from the german term, hoping anyone will help me with the translation. --Japan01 16:27, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Shia instead of Shiite

Shia is a well-known translation for the arabic word شیعه and there's no doubt about it. You can not only trust only on Google, as this is not a wikipedia policy or guideline. I suggest to use Shia in the title instead of the nasty word shiite. --Hossein.ir 16:42, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Shiite is also a well known English term, and there's no evidence that Shia is more common, at least in this phrase. As for "nasty", unless you have some source like a dictionary that says this is an offensive or pejorative term, that remains your own POV. As far as is known, Shiite is perfectly acceptable and unoffensive in English to translate the Arabic word. ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 16:46, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
I did some checking for you and found only one source on the web that claims "Shiite" is a "derogatory term": The Al Jazeera style guide says:
"Sunnis and Shi'is are followers of the Sunna and Shi'a schools. Journalists in the Western media in general use the term Shiite in reference to Shi'i. This is a derogatory term, particularly in English, that should not be used. More important is that it is inaccurate and does not comply with the Arabic way of adjectivizing, as in the case with Sunni." [1]
I have no idea where they got this idea, or why, or if they outweigh other authorities on the English language. Or if wikipedia should comply with the Al Jazeera style manual. But there we are. ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 17:04, 14 January 2007 (UTC)


The majority in Yemen is actually Sunni Muslim, and not Shia as the article suggests. Basically 55% are Sunni, and 45% are Shia. Here's the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Islam. —Preceding unsigned comment added by M.efimov (talkcontribs) 16:50, August 30, 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Map

I have changed the map. --Japan01 22:47, 6 September 2007 (UTC)