Overheard at Iftar
Iftar (Arabic: إفطار ifṭār “breakfast”), refers to the evening meal when Muslims break their fast during the Islamic month of Ramadan
You all know that I am not Muslim. It’s Ramadan and I was invited to an iftar dinner. I live in a compound of physicians and so it was a group of ‘docs’ who got together. I am also not conversant in Arabic. During the course of conversation everyone was laughing. One internist’s husband had a first name – Jihad. He was I guess 30 to 40 years old. At the time he was born it was not an inflammatory name. Other cultures name their children Jesus, Angel, or Neveah (heaven spelled backwards).
Definition of JIHAD
1 : a holy war waged on behalf of Islam as a religious duty; also
: a personal struggle in devotion to Islam especially involving spiritual discipline
2 : a crusade for a principle or belief
But the laughter was over a story of Jihad being stopped at airport security. It turns out that he (Jihad) works for the Bin Laden group. Really! So anytime he travels he’s marked as “Jihad” who works for “Bin Laden.” And his wife added he was once asked by a customs official if, …”he’d named his son Osama?” There is a Bin Laden Hospital nearby to where I live. And it is a popular name – Osama.
I guess there are worse things to be named. And there are some things you just can’t make up.
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