Talk:Mosque of Omar

Reason for this page

There are various pages being created about mosques as if they were the only one with this name or variant. This is meant to be a start to give more structure. Some pages should be renamed to give consistency. Chemical Engineer (talk) 22:21, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

@Onceinawhile, Aranya, CanterburyUK, Chris the speller, South19, South19, and Chemical Engineer: Chemical Engineer's challenge has been out there for six years (!) and nobody has picked up the gauntlet. Still not...? Arminden (talk) 16:28, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

Requested move 18 September 2020

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Consensus to move this to the English name. The question of whether there is a primary topic for "Mosque of Omar" may still be discussed separately. (non-admin closure) BegbertBiggs (talk) 22:07, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

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Masjid Umar → Mosque of Omar – Common name in English. The link Mosque of Omar currently redirects to Mosque of Omar (Jerusalem), but Dome of the Rock was also known as the Mosque of Omar (see e.g. [1] and [2]) and is much better known. Worldwide, the name "Mosque of Omar" is about as generic as "St. Paul's Church". Onceinawhile (talk) 13:46, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

• Support per WP:USEENGLISH. Rreagan007 (talk) 18:51, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
• Comment My first preference is to move Mosque of Omar (Jerusalem) to Mosque of Omar. The Dome of the Rock is a shrine rather than a mosque. To call it "Mosque of Omar" is mistaken usage. 3K008P9 (talk) 01:56, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

I would support that as well, which would make this page Mosque of Omar (disambiguation). @Arminden and Al Ameer son: as the two main contributors to Mosque of Omar (Jerusalem), what do you think? Onceinawhile (talk) 12:36, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

It seems a lot of English-language book seem to use the term "mosque of Omar" to refer to the Dome of the Rock, even though I agree that's not technically a mosque.VR _talk 12:51, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

• Support moving to something based on "Mosque of..." per WP:UE. This is a disambiguation page for mosques named after Omar/Umar, and should use a generic title. Since our article on the eponymous figure is spelled Umar, isn't Mosque of Umar a better title? Of course only on the condition that Umar does not move to Omar, because apparently that page is also under discussion. --HyperGaruda (talk) 15:24, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

  Well, he's now called Omar, so I fully support moving this page to Mosque of Omar. --HyperGaruda (talk) 13:14, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

• Support. It's "political correctness" gone mad & against the nature of spoken languages. This is the English Wikipedia, and English has been used for centuries to discuss Near Eastern, Arab, and Muslim topics. Terminology has evolved, one now usually uses Muslim, not Moslem or Mahommedan, but not all terms have been upended and reformed. 'Umar, pronounced the Arabic way, contains several sounds not used by English speakers. Omar is how the name made it into most or all European languages, it comes close to the Arabic name and is the current standard. So Mosque of Omar, no question, there's no way Masjid Umar should be kept as more than a redirect. There is English academic terminology for Judaism, Christianity (of even the most exotic types), and Islam; all three religions have their specific dead or artificial languages (Biblical Hebrew, Aramaic, Assyro-Aramaic, Coptic, Latin, Classical Arabic, etc.) to use internally, but English does have its own equivalents, there's no need to twist the English language according to the puristic views of the lexically fundamentalist believers-turned-Wikipedians.

Second: calling the Dome of the Rock 'Mosque of Omar' is very, very outdated. About 100 years so. Some went on using it into the 70s, but I don't think anyone who deals with the Middle East has done so since. But considering that users can look up the name when they see it in an old caption, definitely put "Dome of the Rock, in the past also known as Mosque of Omar" on the disambiguation page. Mosque of Omar (Jerusalem) should lead to the actual Mosque of Omar, as it already does, and there we do have the tag "Not to be confused with Dome of the Rock", so all bases are covered.

In general, I'm fully in favour of setting as many redirects as possible, to help those who honestly don't know the English term and are searching for the one they're familiar with. We should help the user find his way through Wiki, but also to help him get accustomed to the English norm. Otherwise, why bother coming to English Wiki? There's one for every language, and I'm sure Arabic has all one needs on Islamic topics. (I'm being polemical here, of course.) Arminden (talk) 19:01, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

• Comment I don't mind so long as there are redirects, but I think in the UK the translated term is rarely if ever used. There are many Masjid Umars. This is where a British Muslim would look. Chemical Engineer (talk) 20:30, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

The Mosque of Omar leading via redirect to Mosque of Omar (Jerusalem) is absolutely NOT a good idea. Once this page is moved to "Mosque of Omar", that redirect needs to be... redirected to this disamb. page. But not before that. Arminden (talk) 21:24, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Why not write an article about the significance of the name of so many mosques. Would make a lot of sense.

There are probably as many Mosques of Omar as there are Churches of St John. How come? There is a significance to it, and probably several spins to that significance. To dedicate a place of worship to a certain saint or, as is here the case, religious, political, and (exceptionally successful) military leader, has a deeper meaning. What is being taught about it? Looking forward to read the article. Forget about the disamb. page, that's the boring part of Wiki. Arminden (talk) 19:41, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure if this phenomenon is covered in reliable sources. This might be best covered at Umar#Religious_legacy or Legacy of Umar. Umar is such a great figure there probably should be an article devoted to cultural depictions of him.VR _talk 20:47, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

I have heard that it has a lot to do with the Military conquests of Umar's era. He pushed the borders of the Muslim realm at an extraordinary pace and "brought Islam" to large parts of the Old World. It is striking how in the Levant, at least some of these mosques are repurposed Crusader churches (Al-Omari Grand Mosque of Beirut, the one at Ramla, the Great Mosque of Gaza), the one in Jabalia stands over the foundations of a Byzantine church, and the one in Jerusalem was initially built at the entrance of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, while the Mosque of Omar (Bethlehem) is just across the town square from the Church of the Nativity. One gets a sense of triumphalism from this arrangement, probably connecting and hinting back to the conquests of Omar. I might be wrong in some cases, but possibly not as a whole. Arminden (talk) 22:02, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

Maybe, but I was also referring to other mosques named after Umar in the rest of the Muslim world. He is widely considered by Sunnis to be a wise and just ruler (Umar#Reign_as_caliph) and he had a lasting impact on Islam. Some one even listed him as the 52nd most influential person in history.VR _talk 22:13, 19 September 2020 (UTC)