What, by any other name, would inspire such terror?
The extremist organization destabilizing an entire region and exacerbating an already perilous humanitarian situation in Syria, where a civil war has displaced millions of people, goes by many names.
It calls itself the Islamic State, portraying itself as a legitimate caliphate, a government based on an extreme, fundamentalist interpretation of Islam. Many international media outlets refer to it as the “so-called Islamic State,” or “IS” for short.
Many Americans simply know it as ISIS: the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
President Obama and most U.S. government officials call it ISIL, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.
Yet U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Middle Eastern governments call it by an Arabic acronym the organization sees as an insult: Daesh.
"In an ideal world, we would have stuck with a shortened Arabic rendering of its name and called it al-Dawla (the State), just as we do with al-Qa’ida,” said Charlie Winter, a senior research associate for the Transcultural Conflict and Violence Initiative at Georgia State.
Why are there so many different names, and what do they mean? Why does the group call itself one name, but the U.S. government refers to it as something else?
Origins in Iraq
The group started out as an affiliate of Al-Qaida in Iraq. Since then, it has created what purports to be a caliphate state, said Winter.
“The caliphate is something all jihadist groups, without exception, want to instate,” he explained. “They want to implement God’s rule on Earth, and run the said state within Sharia law. It’s something Al-Qaida shares with the Islamic State even though the two groups are at loggerheads with each other.”
Communications strategy
ISIS is not some rag-tag group of terrorists sending out crudely made videos on the spur of the moment. Like a professional public relations agency, it has a well-planned, thought-out strategy in mind, Winter said, with more than 40 separate propaganda offices.
“[They] are all very carefully regimented and toe the party line,” he said, “with one central base that dictates everything that all the others do.”
Beyond the beheadings of Westerners that are reported in the international media, ISIS is trying to portray what life is like in its “state,” aiming to recruit those attracted to a way of life different from the status quo, Winter said.
“[The organization] wants to show how it is to live there as a civilian, not just as a fighter,” he said. “It’s created a situation where people join the Islamic State not just to die and become a martyr, but to actually live and be a founding father, or founding mother, of a new state.”
The group has even boasted of how it’s minting currency, just like a nation-state, said Anthony Lemieux, associate professor and researcher in the Transcultural Conflict and Violence Initiative.
“A lot of the propaganda we have studied actually emphasizes that they are doing things that a government would do,” he said, including building infrastructure, providing goods and services, education and healthcare. “It’s about building the perception of legitimacy and capacity.”
Widening global ambitions
“ISIS” and “ISIL” both denote an organization within a specific geographic region. But neither acronym accurately describes the organization or its ambitions anymore, said Amanda Rogers, a post-doctoral fellow in the Transcultural Violence Initiative.
At one time, the organization limited itself to a specific geographic area, but has since expanded its ambitions globally.
“They’ve gone through several changes, different derivations and adding territories,” Rogers said. “It’s been a branding process for them in a lot of ways, but it’s also an issue with the translation (from Arabic to English) itself.
“When they declared the caliphate and existence of a worldwide Muslim state, which is what they consider themselves to be now, they dropped any geographical distinctions, and that’s really important to consider.”
As for the acronym “Daesh”—its meaning, its connotations and the reasons why some governments use it—the story’s more complex.
“Daesh”: an insult or an annoyance?
Western and Middle Eastern officials have repeatedly promoted the use of the Arabic acronym “Daesh” instead of the Islamic State, calling the acronym an insult to the organization.
Daesh originates from the Arabic acronym formed from the term Islamic State in Iraq and Al-Sham, close to ISIS in meaning, Winter said.
“Daesh in Arabic, depending on pronunciation, can mean a group of bigots that impose their will on other people by force,” Rogers said, “and it can also mean people that basically trample things under foot and turn them into dust.”
But Winter believes the discussion over whether the acronym Daesh is offensive to ISIS is complicated. From what he sees on social media outlets he monitors, especially Twitter, some fighters express irritation over what they see as an inaccurate term for the group—since it originates from an acronym related to a geographic region—rather than offense.
“People dispute quite heavily whether it’s actually offensive to them, or whether they care at all,” he said. “I have come across a number of instances where Islamic State fighters have castigated their peers on social media for re-tweeting things that refer to [the] Islamic State as Daesh, and it’s not so much because it has negative connotations, but because they don’t want to be using the same terminology as the kafir (non-Muslims).”
Denying legitimacy
The use of Daesh and the U.S. government’s continued use of ISIL are attempts to rhetorically deny legitimacy to the organization, Rogers said.
“On one hand, it really doesn’t matter what we call them because it’s not like calling them ‘the Islamic State,’ like they want to be called, is going to make them somehow ‘cuddly,’” she said. “But on the other hand, I think it’s important to call them ‘Daesh’ in Arabic and retain the Iraq and Syria part. It denies them the legitimacy that they want on a couple of different fronts.”
In that sense, Daesh serves as an unpalatable, “incorrect” name linguistically close to other words denoting bigotry and tyranny, and the use of both ISIL and ISIS denies the organization represents a true global state.
Countering the messages
If the coalition against the so-called Islamic State wants to fight back, simply attacking its arguments over religious legitimacy won’t work, Winter said.
“You can call the Islamic State un-Islamic as many times as you want, and you can say that the Islamic State is killing more Muslims than anyone else as many times as you want,” he said. “But if anything, its supporters revel in that. They see Islamic State as the lesser of two evils between [Syrian President Bashar al-] Assad or the government in Baghdad.”
The coalition against ISIS has to create its own narrative, driving at the heart of what makes the group so appealing to those who’ve joined, he said.
“It’s by no means just ideology at work,” Winter said. “It’s a whole bunch of economic, social and political issues that are driving people to join.”
PHOTOS: STEVEN THACKSTON & CAROLYN RICHARDSON
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