Do you think America has become too closed minded? Just because Barack Obama’s middle name is Hussein, it doesn’t mean that he is Muslim or a terrorist. Many Obama supporters seem to agree and that is why they have informally changed their middle name to “Hussein.” This is their way of expressing solidarity with Senator Barack Obama, like 19-year old Emily Nordling who changed her profile name on Facebook to “Emily Hussein Nordling.” Like her, many Obama supporters have followed suit, adopting the “Hussein” name. Jeff Strabone of Brooklyn now signs credit card receipts with his newly assumed middle name, while Dan O’Maley of Washington, D.C., jiggered his e-mail account so his name would appear as “D. Hussein O’Maley.”
It all comes down to a group of unlikely-sounding Husseins: Jewish and Catholic, Hispanic and Asian and Italian-American, from Jaime Hussein Alvarez of Washington, D.C., to Kelly Hussein Crowley of Norman, Okla., to Sarah Beth Hussein Frumkin of Chicago.
New York Times said, “Mr. Obama is a Christian, not a Muslim. Hussein is a family name inherited from a Kenyan father he barely knew, who was born a Muslim and died an atheist. But the name has become a political liability.” It is just a name.
“I am sick of Republicans pronouncing Barack Obama’s name like it was some sort of cuss word,” Mr. Strabone wrote in a manifesto titled “We Are All Hussein” that he posted on his own blog and on dailykos.com.
“My name is such a vanilla, white-girl American name,” said Ashley Holmes of Indianapolis, who changed her name online “to show how little meaning ‘Hussein’ really has.”
Some Obama supporters say they were moved to action because of what their own friends, neighbors and relatives were saying about their candidate. Mark Elrod, a political science professor at Harding University in Searcy, Ark., is organizing students and friends to declare their Husseinhood on Facebook on Aug. 4, Mr. Obama’s birthday. Barack Obama said it best, “The theory was we’re all Hussein.”
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