By TwoCircles.net staff reporter,
Srinagar: In a likely welcome move, the Jammu & Kashmir government has decided to standardises spellings of some sacred names by asking, in the first step, all schools in the state to register only the spelling Muhammad while admitting students.
The government has decided to restore the purity of sacred names when the West has often been accused of distorting some of the most sacred Muslim names.
A state education department circular says, “Generally in the admission (forms) and other school records, Muhammad is spelt only as Mohd. This practice needs to be done away with.” Muhammad and its variant spellings — such as Mohammed, Mohammad or Mohamed — make up one of the most popular names across the world.
State education director Muhammad Rafi has been quoted saying, “People have been using it inadvertently, so we decided to make the correction. Since it is admission time now, we have directed schools to enter the proper spelling (in their records).”
There are some other Arabic words which are now spelt much different from their sounding as they are read in Quran. For example, Mecca is used for Makkah in Saudi Arabia where Prophet Muhammad was born and which is now the holiest city for Muslims on this planet. The spelling Makkah is close to the sounding of the word used in Quran.
It is believed that the word Mecca came into use in 1823. In the 1980s, however, the government of Saudi Arabia and some other countries began promoting the name Makkah. The Saudi government’s websites use Makkah to refer to the city.