wikishia talk:Policies and Guidelines

Honorific titles

The challenge

Many of Shia personalities are known with honorific titles such as ayatollah, hujjat al-Islam, shaykh, 'allama, imam, sayyid, etc. What should we do when their names are mentioned in articles? Should we always mention these titles or is it enough to use their first and last names? Keep in mind that the problem is not in the lead of the article; because the first line is always the exact name without any honorific titles. Honorific titles are also mentioned after the first line in a phrase like "... also known as ayatollah... and... ". The problem comes in three places:

• Title of the article
• The body of the article about the person and other articles
• Navboxes and infoboxes (when omitting the titles could be understood as being disrespectful sometimes, while mentioning all of them could cause a large navbox full of titles and long names)

@Shakeri, Nazarzadeh, Haghani, and Bahrami: What do you think?

Discussioin

In my opinion it is necessary (or better to say it is allowed) to use them just for those who are known by these titles like Ayatullah Burujirdi. Ali Shakeri

I agree with brother @Shakeri: to some extend. There are some people who are well known by their title even for opposers. For example: shaykh Mufid, Allame Tabatabaei, etc. So, calling them with their title is not against our neutral policy. Bahrami (talk) 11:43, 23 February 2016 (IRST)

@Bahrami: There is a tiny difference between the two names you mentioned. People still know who Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Tabataba'i is, but if you say Muhammad b. Muhammad b. Nu'man, people would ask, "WHO?!". So let's say, the title of Shaykh for al-Shaykh al-Mufid is not a respecting title any more, but the title of Allama for 'Allama Tabataba'i still is. And so is the situation with Sayyid Husayn Burujirdi. And even though he is mostly known with this title, omitting it would not make any problem, I think. --Hamed A.F (talk) 12:28, 23 February 2016 (IRST)

@Hamed A.F:I think the very important point is to see how the person is mentioned in English sources and how he is searched. --Nazarzadeh (talk) 15:06, 23 February 2016 (IRST)

@Nazarzadeh:You're right, but I think English sources are divided to two different groups; Shi'a and non-Shi'a. Using the honorific titles could build a high wall between us and the second group, while not using them could be considered not-respectful by the first group. --Hamed A.F (talk) 10:11, 24 February 2016 (IRST)

Decisions and Results

[nothing yet]