Jun 17, 2015

BABIL, Iraq — The Popular Mobilization Units announced Labbayka Ya Hussain (At Your Service, Hussain), the military offensive to liberate Anbar province from Islamic State (IS) control, on May 25. The operation's name — invoking the killing of Imam Hussein ibn Ali in 680 and the call to take revenge on his killers — has raised a debate over the sectarian connotations of names in Iraq. Many Shiites consider IS members the grandchildren of Imam Hussein’s killers. The title has angered Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar, who find it inapppropriate for a military offensive designed to liberate a Sunni-majority province.

This episode is nothing new in Iraq. The use of religion and names with sectarian affiliations has been clearly reflected in the country's political and social life. Since the overthrow of President Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003 following the US-led invasion, sectarian conflict has intensified. Because one can often tell a person's religious affiliation from his or her name, many Iraqis, Shiites and Sunnis alike, have changed them when they move to an area where they are in the minority. They do so to avoid possible harassment and even death in the event of sectarian violence, as happened in 2006 when sectarian killings escalated between Sunnis and Shiites. In Baghdad province, unidentified bodies were found daily.

The Emirati newspaper Akhbar al-Khaleej reported March 1, “Three thousand Iraqi citizens bearing the [Sunni] name Omar asked that their name be changed for fear of being killed.” The author and columnist Ali Hussein wrote March 9 in Al-Mada about such people, calling them “simple people” who have been pushed by sectarian conflict to essentially “abandon their origins.”

Hussein told Al-Monitor, “This phenomenon is attributed to the emergence of armed groups, be they Sunni or Shiite, and their use of violence against each other on the basis of religious and sectarian beliefs.” He added, “The name-changing phenomenon spread widely following the occupation of the Sunni-majority city of Mosul by IS on June 10, 2014, the displacement of residents, and the displacement of the population from the Sunni-majority cities of Tikrit and Anbar to the Shiite-majority city of Baghdad and other Shiite cities in central Iraq as a result of war and occupation.”

Hussein also asserted, “Most of the names that are being changed refer to Sunni personages, such as Omar, Abu Bakr and Osman. There is seemingly a veto on these names in the Shiite central and southern cities.” For some Iraqis, a simple name change does not suffice. “Some people were forced to forge IDs and get two names, one to be used in Shiite areas and another to be used in Sunni areas,” Hussein said.