Linguistic wrote:
Let's agree on a rule set. How about:
- The word: God,
- Proper names, such as Muhammad and Mecca,
- Nouns referring to grand concepts, such as The Garden, Hell, The Beyond, for which there are less grand versions!
In my mind, capitalization is for names (identifiers). For instance, "God" which is the translation of "Allah" (and the corresponding pronouns He, His, etc.) should definitely be capitalized, but "god" as a translation of
ilah (a god) should not. Names of persons, towns, months would certainly be capitalized. Similarly, "Hell" is a specific place so the word is an identifier (as opposed to just being descriptive) and should be capitalized.
The tricky part are words that have attained a special meaning in Arabic because of special religious designation, such as
Taqwa or
Ghayb. On the one hand, if they are not capitalized, they seem less specific than the Arabic word. On the other hand, capitalizing them may be construed as interpretive, not linguistic. This is worth discussing further.