And then there's Daesh..al-Dawla. The Syrian soldiers I follow say ISIS ISIL and Daesh talking about who they are going after.
The jihadist group which controls large swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq is sometimes referred to by different names by English-speaking governments and media.
When talking about the group - which has also spawned affiliates elsewhere in the Middle East, Africa and Asia - UN and US officials generally use the acronym "Isil", the acronym of "Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant".
But the term "Daesh" (or Da'ish) has also gained currency, both in the Middle East and further afield, and has been used as a way of challenging the legitimacy of the group due to the negative connotations of the word.
Daesh is essentially an Arabic acronym formed from the initial letters of the group's previous name in Arabic - "al-Dawla al-Islamiya fil Iraq wa al-Sham". Although it does not mean anything as a word in Arabic, it sounds unpleasant and the group's supporters object to its use.
Daesh also sounds similar to an Arabic verb that means to tread underfoot, trample down, or crush something.
The group itself has not used that name since June 2014 when it declared the creation a caliphate and shortened its name to "Islamic State" (IS) to reflect its expansionist ambitions.
Since then, BBC News has been using that term, but qualifying it as "Islamic State group" or "self-styled Islamic State" and shortening it to "IS" on subsequent mentions.
Other media have continued to use "Isil" or "Isis", which is based on the other widely used translations of the group's former name - "Islamic State in Iraq and Syria" or "Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham".
(IS, Isil and Isis The root of the Isil-Isis inconsistency lies in the Arabic word "al-Sham")Al-Sham can be translated variously as "the Levant", "Greater Syria", "Syria" or even "Damascus".
769 posted on 04/21/2018 7:34:47 AM PDT by STARLIT
(Trust The Plan.)