Omar al-Jaffal, an Iraqi journalist, wrote a scary note on his Facebook page: “I can be killed just because of my name. Have you ever heard of someone fearing his own name?” The Iraqi poet Ahmed Abdul Hussein replied: “Mere names have become a pretext for killing people.”
The story seems similar to a movie recalling the events of the 2006-08 civil war in Iraq, when both armed Sunni and Shiite groups decided to set up checkpoints, catching and killing members of the other sect. They mostly relied on names and religious and historical connotations to identify their targets. For instance, Omar is a Sunni name, whereas Abdel-Hussein is Shiite.