Linguistic misappropriation!

Algeria was a French colony and is very much influenced by French culture. A great leader of Algeria, some decades back, was Boumedienne. We never learnt his proper Muslim name, which may have been Bu' Muhieddin (short of Abu Muhieddin).

About six decades back, the name of the famous leader of Indonesia, Soekarno was spelled by some Bangla newspaper of the then East Pakistan as Shukrana, apparently trying to give him a Muslim sounding name. Some Bangla newspapers in West Bengal used to spell his name as Sukorno. Most Indonesian Muslims apparently do not care about names identifying themselves as Muslims.

While discussing about names and the spelling and pronouncing used concerning names, it may be mentioned that in recent years, in our country, the word 'Ahmad' is being spelled by many as Ahmed and even pronounced as such by some. The deviation is apparently an imitation of the Arabs.

The Arabs may pronounce some words in their way and we are not bound to pronounce Arabic words in the same manner as they do. The people of Feni in our country pronounce (between themselves) the name of their place as 'Heni' but while writing that word or while talking to outsiders, they neither write nor pronounce the word in that way.

The deviation in spelling or in pronouncing the world Ahmad as Ahmed is not justified exactly as in the case of Feni and Heni. In our country, we have different ways of pronouncing a particular Bangla word in our different localities. But the standard spelling and pronouncing remains the same. In case of Arabic words, Arabs may pronounce a particular word differently in their different localities. But for us, non-Arabs, Qur'anic pronunciation of Arabic words is the standard that we have to follow.