DMV Rules Youth Can Keep 4 JIHAD Car Plate After All

A 16-year-old Hemet youth will be allowed to keep his personalized license plate--4 JIHAD--after the California Department of Vehicles on Wednesday confirmed that Jihad is the youth’s name and reversed a previous decision to recall the plate.

Jihad Jaffer, whose 1979 BMW bears the year-old plate, was asked last month by the DMV to turn it in after a fellow Hemet resident wrote a letter saying 4 JIHAD is offensive in light of the Persian Gulf War.

Jihad is an Arabic word that has been widely translated as meaning holy war in English since Iraqi President Saddam Hussein used it to call Muslims to arms against the United States.

The DMV reversed its stand after a check of Jihad’s driver’s license record confirmed the youth’s name.

“It’s longstanding policy that if a person has his name on a license plate and the name apparently means something else, we will allow him to keep the plate if we’re able to determine that it is his name,” DMV spokesman Bill Gengler said. “In this case it’s a relatively common name in the Mideast.”

Many Islamic scholars contend that jihad-- a word found in the Koran, the Muslim holy book--is better translated as an individual’s private struggle to live an exemplary Muslim life and to spread the faith through peaceful means.

Dr. Kareem Jaffer, who protested the DMV’s demand that his son relinquish the plate, said he did not name his son with a holy war in mind.

“It’s an old custom in the Islamic world that when you have a new baby, you open up the Koran just haphazardly at a certain page, read both pages and choose a name out of those pages,” the neurologist said.

“Jihad is a very common name. You don’t think about holy war when you name your son. After all, 17 years ago there was no war, holy or not.”

Although he has not yet been formally notified, Jaffer said he welcomes the DMV’s decision. But, he said, the ordeal has already inflicted psychological wounds on his son.

“He’s afraid, because this is the first car that he’s ever owned, and he’s not been using it these (past) three weeks,” said the father, a 50-year-old Iraqi-American who has lived in Hemet for the past 12 years. “He still does not want to use the car for fear of people at school vandalizing it.”

Gengler said the DMV’s original attempt to recall the plate followed departmental policy proscribing vanity plates that may be considered offensive.

“We believe that our initial interpretation was correct, not knowing the facts that became available to us concerning the son’s name,” he said.

The DMV’s initial decision in January was sparked by a letter from Hemet resident Rodney Walker, 38, who wrote after his 12-year-old daughter asked him why someone would be allowed to own a plate with such a controversial term.

Walker said he did not know that Jihad was the name of the youth who owned the car until reading a story in The Times Orange County.

He commended the teen-ager’s father for fighting for the right to keep the plate but said he would encourage the doctor to give it up voluntarily because of sensitivity over the war.

“I think he’s a winner for standing up for his rights--nothing could be more American,” Walker said. “But he’d be a hero and a patriot for relinquishing the plate.”