With President Barack Obama counting down his days in office, it won’t be long before the world stops hearing about ISIL. No, ISIL, the jihadist group, isn’t going away. But ISIL, the acronym, may be enjoying its final days.
The president is pretty much the only international leader who uses the ISIL acronym. It stands for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. The Levant is a region on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea that includes modern-day Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and Syria, according to Britannica.com.
Obama says he uses the ISIL acronym because it’s accurate: the Islamic State is all over the Mediterranean coast. Obama’s adversaries say that’s not why he prefers ISIL. They point out that the last “S” in ISIS stands for Syria; Obama, they claim, will do anything to avoid the name of the Middle Eastern country that has vexed his foreign policy for years.
If that were true, however, Obama might have chosen to follow the French leadership’s chosen acronym: DAESH. That’s an abbreviated version of the Arabic words that mean “the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.”
ISIS leaders apparently do not like when people refer to them as DAESH. This year, they threatened to yank out the tongues of those who use that acronym. Why do they care? When spoken aloud, DAESH sounds almost identical to the Arabic word for “something that crushes or tramples.” Despite all appearances, crushing and trampling is not the ISIS brand.
ISIS leaders not only hate the acronym DAESH, they insist that it’s disrespectful to refer to them in any kind of abbreviated form: ISIL, ISIS, DAESH – none of them is appropriate. Rather, the jihadists contend, Americans from the president on down should refer to the group at all times by its full Arabic name: Al-Dawla al-Islamiya fi al-Iraq wa al-Sham.
Good luck with that.
Neil Chethik, aka the Grammar Gourmet, is executive director of the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning (www.carnegiecenterlex.org) and author of “FatherLoss” and “VoiceMale.” The Carnegie Center offers writing classes and seminars for businesses and individuals. Contact Chethik at neil@carnegiecenterlex.org or 859-254-4175.