I’ve always wondered why we seem to have this special set of rules for the letter Q, but only in relation to Arabic translations. Why and when did we decide to do this? Why not Katar or Al Kaeda? Or am I wrong? Is this special set of rules more wide spread and I just didn’t know about it? What’s the history of the Arabic Q?
Arabic has two letters ق and ك, which are pronounced distinctly in Arabic, but which are roughly similar to English's k sound, especially the latter. In modern practice, we transliterate the ق with q and ك with k. Similar practices exist for other languages that use the Arabic alphabet (and other Semitic alphabets), which is why you see Qom in Iran, despite the fact that the Farsi pronunciation of ق is unlike the Arabic one.