Shihad is an alternative rock and heavy metal band originally from Wellington, New Zealand, where they formed in 1988. In 1999 the band relocated to Melbourne, Australia, where three of the members currently reside.
The name "Shihad" was chosen after members of the band misheard " jihad" as "Shihad" in the 1984 David Lynch movie, Dune. Following the September 11 terrorist attacks the band decided to change their name due to the similarity between the band's name Shihad and the Arabic word jihad. At the 2002 Big Day Out music festival in Auckland New Zealand they released t-shirts with 'Shihad' on them, and 'Remote' below, indicating that 'Remote' was to be the new name. However, due to this name being taken already, they settled on "Pacifier", which was a successful single from their album " The General Electric".
Their next album under the name Pacifier was widely considered to be overproduced and not quite Shihad's style.
On September 17, 2004, the band announced to the world that they would change their name back to Shihad. To quote the band, "The events surrounding the name change and our choice to be known as Pacifier are well documented. As much as we believed in what we were doing, and the reasons for doing it at the time - the truth is we were wrong."
In an interview , Jon Toogood spoke about an event that contributed to their decision:
"We were in America while it invaded Iraq and had to play at festivals that were supposedly `support the troops festivals' when we didn't believe in the war at all. That's what the song All the Young Fascists is about – the day we played Miami in front of 30,000 kids at this festival that was originally just a rock festival. A week out, just because of the timing, it was turned into the support the troops show and it was being simulcast live to Iraq. We were on this bill with these really ugly – what we call WWF – metal bands, and we were shitting ourselves.