"Allah" replaced by "..."

[Connie Bobroff]

Does anyone know about this usage on Persian websites of "Allah" being replaced by an alef and three dots? Who started this practice and when? I don't recall having seen this in print books. Muslims are supposed to write and say the name of God as much as possible. It is the Jews who are forbidden to do this. There has been the technical problem with the ligature issue in this word but I don't think this is related here.

Here is an example:

http://www.rehabiran.net/SearchResults.aspx?q=%D8%B1%D8%AD%D9%85%D8%AA%20%D8%A7...%20%D8%AD%D8%A7%D9%81%D8%B8%D9%8A

 

[Siavash Mahmoudian]

Dear Connie,
As long as I know the word Allah is replaced by an alef and three dots usually when it's written on paper.
The reason is that the paper might fell off the ground, or throw out in a trash bin, and that counts as disrespect to the name of God.
As you might know the names of God in Islam are holly.

I'm not 100% sure of the reason I've just mentions but I've only heard that from 2 or 3 people.

Bests,
Syavash

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http://groups.google.com/group/persian-computing

[Vafa Khalighi]

Yes, I mainly have seen it because people want to make it short However I have decided to replace it with "خداوند" or "Khodavand" in my font.

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[Behnam Esfahbod]

Right, Siavash. This is what they "teach" children in school.

-Behnam

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[Connie Bobroff]

Thanks, everyone. Somehow I had missed all this. It is interesting for me that they even do this in a database (see the example link I gave earlier.) It seems the search-engine would need some extra coding to process this.

[Behnam Esfahbod]

Vafa, I believe any explicit replacement of letters in the font level
is very harmful to users. In this case, user sees "khodavand' on the
screen, but the find/search feature of the application cannot find it,
and it would be very discriminating. Please let users decide what
they wants and respect their decision.

-Behnam

[John Hudson]

>> As long as I know the word Allah is replaced by an alef and three dots
>> usually when it's written on paper.
>> The reason is that the paper might fell off the ground, or throw out in a
>> trash bin, and that counts as disrespect to the name of God.
>> As you might know the names of God in Islam are holly.

I've not encountered this in Islam before.

In Judaism, any piece of paper containing the unpronounced Name of God
must be treated in special ways so, for instance, if a book or scroll
containing the Name is damaged and is to be disposed of, this must be
done according to particular ritual and method. This led some very
scrupulous Jews to raise the question of what should be done when the
Name appears on a computer: is it okay to delete the document?

JH

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Tiro Typeworks www.tiro.com
Gulf Islands, BC ti...@tiro.com

You may quote to me, render to Caesar the things that
are Caesar's, but St. Hilary commented on that, that
the less we had of Caesar, the less we would have to
render to him. -- Dorothy Day

[Vafa Khalighi]

Thanks for the suggestion/criticism.

[Behnam]

This is very frequent and it is not 'new' per se. It was practiced for longtime by a segment of the society but now it is officially enforced.
In personal letters to friends and relatives, the word was replaced by dots, by fear of what may happen to that piece of paper, unbecoming to a sacred word.
It was less frequently used in publications such as books but in newspapers I do remember its sporadic use. One reason being that the books are not often written by that segment of the society. But it can also be rationalized this way that the newspaper can be used to wrap the cheese. The book, less likely!

There is no need for search engine to do special treatment. They are just dots as intended.

-b