You have got to be kidding me. Do normal people in France put a kids name and birthdate on the back of a t-shirt?
I’m not sure if the parents should be arrested for the t-shirt, but I really do not buy this “innocent” act, especially from the uncle who had the name and birthdate added to the shirt.
This reminds me of that poor kid who could not get a birthday cake with his first and middle names on it: “Adolf Hitler”. If I were a kid named “Jihad”, born on September 11, I certainly would not want that fact plastered upon my back! The kids in little Adolf Hitler’s family were eventually taken from their parents.
Well, it’s definitely not as unsubtle as naming one’s kid Adolf Hitler; at least there’s some chance of plausible deniability. I do think they were fully aware of the implications, whether it was done because they’re true believers making a statement or because they thought it would be funny. Given the long, rich tradition of Moroccan-French Muslim comedy in the world, it’s really a toss-up.
The shirt was bought for the kids birthday. Not an unusual gift in that case (the idea usually being that since the kids goong to grow out of it in a few months anyways, mom can keep the shirt tonremember the day).
:dubious: It just seems highly unusual to me. As I said, perhaps it’s common in France to put birth dates on shirts, but given what happened, I’d guess it isn’t.
This is more like a kid named Jesus who was born December 25. I could see some uncle making a cute shirt with that. But it would be to point out the connection between the birthdate and the name. I still think that’s what was being done here. (And the “bomb” reference on the front is just the icing on the cake!)
That may be the formal meaning, but it’s not what most people understand when saying “apology”: people understand it as saying “I’m sorry I screwed up”, not as saying “I’m not sorry at all, my actions were perfectly correct and if you got hurt it’s your problem” - which is the second meaning you gave and the way it’s used by the law.
Are you serious?! Maybe this is just me once again overestimating how familiar the average person is with terrorism and national security, but France is a front line in the Muslim/Western conflict. They’re in a war right now, in fact, against Islamic militants in Mali. They had a huge dust-up a few years back about banning the burka in public. They have all kinds of anti-Muslim political parties. Barely a year ago, a Islamic terrorist shot 8 people in southern France. Just yesterday, AQIM beheaded French hostages.
You’d better believe the French know what Jihad and 9-11 are.
France isn’t an “Arabic speaking country”. No one said the French don’t know what 9-11 and Jyhad are. You should read peoples posts more carefully before responding to them.
I was thinking by analogy of how few Americans probably know the dates of the bombings in London or Madrid, let alone would recognize those dates on a shirt. Maybe 9-11 is better known worldwide, but maybe that’s an American-centric point of view.
Like a German mother naming her child “Kampf,” then.
I was going to say, if the kid was born in 3-11, I suspect Spaniards would be freaking out while Americans would be wondering what the fuss is about. The date of the WTC attacks are certainly known globally, but they don’t have the same immediate resonance as they do for Americans, who spent most of a decade with the media treating the attacks as the most important event in human history.
Plus the kid was actually born on September 11th, as approximately 20 million other people have been, for reason that have nothing to do with terrorist plots. Whatever the average French-Morrocan associates with the date, I suspect the mother in question primarily thinks of it as her sons birthday.
