Talk:Tradition of removing shoes in the home and houses of worship

Baltic countries[edit]

The map (and info) regarding Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania is wrong. Shoes are removed in Baltic countries. Kapsapää (talk) 08:46, 5 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Your concerns have been addressed. In the future, file comments should go where the file is hosted (Wikimedia Commons). Stefán Örvar Sigmundsson (talk) 22:41, 5 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Mosques where worshippers keep their shoes[edit]

In Agent Storm: My Life Inside al-Qaeda about a place in Dammaj: "The mosque was the only one in the Muslim world in which students were required to keep their shoes on. A hadith viewed as authoritative by Sheikh Muqbil stated the Prophet had prayed in this way": are there other sources about this? Apokrif (talk) 18:25, 2 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

What about South and Central America, and Africa?[edit]

--98.128.228.237 (talk) 10:22, 12 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Position in the UK[edit]

"In the United Kingdom, there are people in both camps."

What does "both camps" mean? I don't see any prior mention of camps. The page title and lead mention only a tradition of removing shoes, not a tradition of not removing shoes.

But if wearing shoes at home versus not wearing shoes at home is what it means, it doesn't match with my experience at all. My experience is that people generally don't wear shoes in their own homes, and it would be considered weird to do so. But when visiting other people's homes, it varies – some will choose to remove their shoes, and some hosts will ask you to, but others aren't bothered about it. I see that the sources give the impression that, indeed, people vary, but it isn't clear from either source which position is the norm.

"That said, it is uncommon for people to walk around barefoot with people preferring to keep their socks on."

Really? I would have thought it to be not uncommon at all, at least in the warmer months of the year. Sandals and flipflops are normally worn without socks; how do you "keep" your socks on if you didn't have them on in the first place? Furthermore, the wording makes it sound as though the worldwide view makes a false dichotomy between having shoes on and being barefoot. Indeed, despite this comment, the paragraph doesn't mention slippers at all. I furthermore see that this statement is unsourced. — Smjg (talk) 15:09, 22 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

User:Moonsun147258 has just trimmed it down:

"In the United Kingdom, whether shoes are taken off is at the homeowner's discretion. However, taking one's shoes off is far more common."

I'm not sure that this is more accurate. For a start, it completely ignores the important distinction between residents and guests. Furthermore, it could be interpreted to the effect that the homeowner dictates "take your shoes off" or "keep your shoes on" for all residents and guests. In reality:

In most households, removing shoes when coming home is something residents do without a second thought. The main variation is in whether guests remove their shoes, and this depends to an extent on both the host's rules and the guest's preference.
Householders insisting that people keep their shoes on in the house would be an alien concept here.

To put it another way, for a given individual there are at least three questions:

Do you remove your shoes when entering your own home?
Do you remove your shoes when entering someone else's home, if not explicitly asked to do so by the host?
Do you expect your guests to remove their shoes?

OK, so one's answer to question 1 may be due to either personal choice or house policy depending on circumstances. And you could argue that 3 should be a 3-way question (take off, keep on or not really bothered either way) and, while I've seen implications that some householders in some places may have a "keep your shoes on" policy, I have trouble imagining it happening here. (I furthermore wonder if householders having such a policy would typically kick out anybody who arrives barefoot and doesn't bring any shoes.)

Furthermore, we should be more consistent about addressing the matter of what people do wear on their feet in the house if not shoes. With this trimming, everything about this has disappeared.

There must be a way we can write this so that

it addresses the dominant position on all of the questions I've listed
it addresses the matter I mentioned just now
it's accurate
it's adequately sourced.

But I'm not sure what that way is.... — Smjg (talk) 09:48, 12 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Additionally, it's inappropriate to remove the mention of slippers from the UK statement and not equally remove it from all of the statements about other countries for which they are referred to. This makes it sound as though slippers aren't a thing here, which is nonsense. — Smjg (talk) 18:45, 20 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]