When Muhammad Zakir Khan, an professor at Broward College in Florida, tried to sign up for a new video game, he got an unexpected message. "Your account has been blocked as a result of a match against the Specially Designated Nationals list," the message read. Khan might have been used to some amount of profiling of Muslim Americans in public spaces in the United States. But having the same happen in the video game world came as a surprise.

It turned out that Khan's name had been flagged because it turns up in a US Treasury list of individuals and companies that are subjected to economic and trade sanctions, including terrorists and narcotics traffickers. Essentially, it is a list of people Americans are not allowed to transact with. As the Intercept notes, the name Muhammad Khan does turn up on four occasions in the Treasury list, including one financier for Pakistani terrorist organisation Lashkar-e-Taiba. Boing Boing however, also points out that LinkedIn lists 16,031 people named Muhammad Khan in its database, more than Joe Smith, which had 10,070 hits. Those living in South Asia would find this easy to corroborate, considering how common the name is.

Tim Sweeney, the Chief Executive Officer of Epic Games, which created the video game Khan was trying to play, tweeted out an apology and explanation.

Sweeney explained that the company had used the US Treasury database as a way of filtering people who tried to use its gaming engine, which is complicated software often used in major commercial projects, which would be subject to American trade restrictions. He added that it was not meant to be used to filter people who were simply trying to play the game.

Khan, while accepting the apology, has added that he doesn't feel it is entirely enough. He tweeted saying that the video game industry has to do much more work to learn about culture and diversity, a lack of which ends up leaving Muslim-Americans feeling left out.