Posted by
Emmett of the Unblinking Eye on Monday, December 03, 2007 2:18:56 PM
By now pretty much everyone has heard of the English teacher who has been/will be deported from Sudan because she permitted her kindergarten class to name their teddy bear "Mohammed". And although many in Sudan have protested that sentence, apparently believing that it would be better if she was killed, that (fortunately) has not caught on. But the impact of the outrage may be felt farther, and longer, than anyone expects.
Take, for example, the recent California Appellate Court case of
Hossain vs. Hossain. Now, as cases go, this one isn't very exciting: two gents with the last name of Hossain are battling over how much each owes on the dissolution of a hotel partnership. But what I did find interesting was how the court referred to each party. For those who don't know, when two parties to a reported case have the same last name, the court will normally distinguish them by referring to them by their first name. Here, the plaintiff and appellant, Kazi Shadat Hossain, is referred to in the Opinion as "Kazi", while the defendant and respondent, Mohammed Jamshed Hossain, is referred to as ....... Jamshed.
Jamshed? Why "Jamshed"? Any particular rational reason not to refer to him by his first name, Mohammed? Given that "Mohammed" is the No. 1 first name in the Moslem world, avoiding its use in business and law could get prickly. And what would the court have done if it didn't have his middle name? Would it have called him "the other Hossain guy" rather than risk traipsing on the sensibilities of those who name their child "Mohammed"?
It's one thing to get militantly upset at someone using "Mohammed" as the name of a teddy bear, but when a court refrains from calling a man named Mohammed "Mohammed", things may have gone a bit too far.