Parents banned from naming their baby son 'JIHAD' by court

ruby orimba

April 18, 2018 12:41 PM

The court ordered that it be removed from the boy’s birth certificate

A court in France has told a couple they cannot name their baby Jihad as that would have an adverse effect on the boy’s life.

The case first came to court last summer when authorities in the Toulouse suburb of Leguevin were immediately alerted after the child was given the name.

Now a court in the south-western French city has ordered that it be removed from the boy’s birth certificate and a new one issued giving his first name as 'Jahid', the local.fr reported.

Struggle

French parents are free to name their children as they wish, so long as the child - or any third party - is not harmed by it.

In the past the name police have banned a series of names that have fallen foul of those rules including Nutella and Fraise.

The word 'jihad' translates as 'struggle' and has various meanings.

It can mean struggling against oneself in an attempt at moral improvement, struggling peacefully to better one's society, or - most commonly - struggling in a military sense.

Swap names

Historically, it was understood as an armed struggle against non-Muslims, but more modern scholars have associated it with defensive warfare.

France has been on heightened alert after a series of terror attacks by homegrown Islamists in recent years, making the authorities sensitive to parents naming their child 'jihad'.

A similar case took place two years ago in the northern town of Roubaix.

In that instance, when the parents there were told they couldn’t name their boy Jihad, they themselves came up with the idea of swapping the vowels to make it Jahid.

ruby orimba