Is this offensive or could it be viewed as such.

[JamesTFHS]

So for one of the major capitol's of my world i was thinking of using A'lam Iblis which is arabic for world despair. yes my villains do use this city as their home. Yes alot of violence has happend in this city. So to me the name fits so well. I have a deep love for the arabic language. so my question is will this be offensive to anyone? please give an honest answer.

 

[Mindfire]

I doubt anyone will be offended just because you decided to use an Arabic word. What makes you think this could be offensive?

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

Anything might end up offending anyone, but I don't know that this in particular would end up offending any significant number of people. You should be fine.

 

[wordwalker]

The usual way around that is to have plenty of quasi-Arabic heroes and such in the mix too.

 

[Steerpike]

There's not much, if anything, to be gained by worrying about offending this group or that. More to be lost, IMO.

 

[Zero Angel]

This could more easily be viewed as being offensive if you only use Arabic for negative things in your world or if the villains are Middle Eastern for no real reason.

 

[Anders Ämting]

It's sometimes hard to tell what will upset people and what won't, because people don't always make a lot of sense.

That said, I can pretty much guarantee that no Swedish people would object if you named the place "Världsångest." I can't imagine why the Arabs would be any different.

Actually, Världsångest mostly sounds like the name of an 80s punk-rock band. Or a modern day chiptune band.

 

[Sheriff Woody]

I am not offended.

 

[Shockley]

Iblis is the Muslim term for their respective devil figure, so I don't think it would be particularly bad to have villains come from, you know, Satan.

 

[Caged Maiden]

I think it sounds beautiful...

 

[Devor]

Only if, like, they're portrayed as being in "despair" because of some horrible arabian stereotype.

 

[Valoren]

Simply using an arabic name in a negative context isn't grounds for muslims to issue a fatwah on your butt, Just don't insult Muhammed and throw in an positive middle eastern character and your all good.