Posted on 09/12/2014 10:36:29 AM PDT by Sherman Logan
Some conservatives have tried to make something of the fact that President Barack Obama routinely refers to the organization that seized the Iraqi city of Mosul and declared a caliphate not as the “Islamic State in Iraq and Syria” or ISIS, but as the “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant,” or ISIL. In his televised address about the group on September 10, for example, he used the acronym ISIL twenty times.
The ISIS vs. ISIL controversy first emerged, as far as I can tell, when FoxNews.com published “Obama’s Use of ISIL, not ISIS, Tells Another Story” on August 24, an analysis of the two acronyms by Liz Peek of the Fiscal Times. Peek argued:
Both describe the same murderous organization. The difference is that the Levant describes a territory far greater than simply Iraq and Syria. It’s defined as this: The Levant today consists of the island of Cyprus, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, and part of southern Turkey.
In other words, Levant inflates the group’s ambitions from merely two countries to significantly more. Some go even further: Phyllis Chesler tentatively adds Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf emirates.
Peek sees in this a cunning sleight of hand by Obama de-emphasizing his failures in Syria and Iraq. Others suspect him of gratuitously yanking Israel into the equation. But there is no meaningful geographic or political difference between the two translations.
In Arabic, the organization (at least until it was renamed in late June 2014) is Ad-Dawla as-Islamiya fi’l-Iraq wa’sh-Sham (الدولة الإسلامية في العراق والشام, known in Arabic by the acronym Da‘sh). All but the final word are simple to translate. Sham, usually translated as Greater Syria, has no exact equivalent in English. Greater Syria is an amorphous geographic and cultural term like Midwest or Middle East that lacks official boundaries. It always includes the modern states of Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan, as well as the Palestinian Territories, but some also consider it to include parts of Egypt, Iraq, Turkey, and even all of Cyprus.
Inasmuch as there has never been a sovereign country called Sham, the term’s geographic meaning remains a theoretical debate. For most of the 20th century, from 1918 to 2000, politicians (such as King Abdullah I of Jordan and Hafez al-Assad of Syria) and movements (notably the Syrian Social Nationalist Party) aspired without success to create and dominate Sham. (I wrote a book on this topic, Greater Syria: The History of an Ambition, published by Oxford University Press in 1990.)
Because “Greater Syria” is heavy on the tongue, Da‘sh’s name gets simplified to “Syria.” But that name being so easily confused with the existing state of Syria which first came into existence in 1946, others choose to translate “Sham” as “Levant.” Although Levant has the distinct advantage of not being thus confused, it is an archaic word dating to the 15th century full of gentle and exotic connotations utterly inappropriate to the murderous Da‘sh. Its borders are also imprecise, referring vaguely to the countries of the eastern Mediterranean, where the sun rises (levant is French for “rising”).
In short, both translations are accurate, both are correct, and both have deficiencies — one refers to a state, the other has an archaic ring. For reasons unknown to me, the executive branch of the U.S. government adopted the ISIL nomenclature and its staff generally use this term, even though members of Congress, the media, and specialists (including me) generally prefer ISIS.
So, let’s not worry how to translate Da‘sh and concentrate our efforts instead on ridding the world of this barbaric menace.
— Daniel Pipes is the president of the Middle East Forum. © 2014 by Daniel Pipes. All rights reserved.
The issue is created simply by differing translations, both of which are correct, but both of which also carry inaccurate connotations.
Offhand, ISIL sounds more accurate to me, since ISIS implies the modern country of Syria. But I use ISIS, because how often do you get to reference an ancient Egyptian goddess in modern political discussions?
MO calling them ISIL merely supports there overall goal which includes Israel, Jordan and others. When we and the hero of Benghazi use the term we support the threat agains their country.
We should call them ISIS and show we don’t buy into it.
IMO
You mean, Obama consistently calling them ISIL has nothing to do with rewritting the map of the Middle East and falling into the trap of not recognizing the existence of Israel and also Lebanon? Because as Allen West points out, if you use ISIL you are then validating the Islamic totalitarian and jihadist claim that the modern day Jewish State of Israel is an occupation state and does not exist in the eyes of Muslims.
Read more at http://allenbwest.com/2014/08/obamas-use-isil-reveals-true-allegiance-animus-towards-israel/#HAfTPbiGWqptZbJ3.99
CNN went on the record saying that they are using ISIS. fwiw
Everyone is using term ISIS. The question is why Obama persists in using ISIL. He is odd man out. We know the answer - his failure in Iraq and Syria.
the name “ Da‘sh”...may cause some confusion in certain...”communities”/
Sorry, did you read the article? ISIS is using neither term. The term they use refers either way to Israel, Jordan, etc.
The term “Syria,” as a geographical expression, till the last century, included Israel, Jordan and so forth. IOW, it meant pretty much the same thing as the Levant, though both terms are pretty vague as to boundaries.
Sorry, Mr. West is just wrong. I have a lot of respect for him, but his opinion on this subject is pretty thoroughly outweighed by that of Mr. Pipes, one of the world’s leading scholars of the Middle East. His conservative credentials are also pretty solid, so it’s not like this is an attempt to defend Obama for political advantage.
If not that, then perhaps the RRSIS? The Ray Rice State of Iraq and Syria?
O’bastard uses ISIL because he wants to give them some holy Mooselimb historic credibility.
Oh? Are we supposed to read the article. LOL. Got me there.
I am familiar with the term Levant and i think the hero of Benghazi’s use of the term is supporting the destruction of Israel and a couple of arab countries for that matter.
Presidents choose words with certain meaning.
Terrorists have had their eye on Jordan ever since the king died.
This has been bothering me too. I am reading Philip Mansel's history of the area: "Levant: Splendour and Catastrophe on the Mediterranean," Yale U Press, 2010.
The map at the beginning of the book shows the Levant of 1930, which includes
Athens,
Gallipoli,
Constantinople,
Smyrna (today Izmir),
Iskanderun,
Aleppo,
Tripoli,
Beirut,
Damascus,
Sidon,
Haifa,
Jaffa,
Jerusalem,
Cairo,
Alexandria.
WE know that these idiots, who are living in the seventh century of mohammed, consider 1930 part of today. So, Obama's "ISIL" has an extraordinarily chilling meaning. He is fully aware of what he's broadcasting to the muslim world.
Depends on what the meaning of IS IS....................
This article is beside the point. Does he really think scholarship has anything to do with the fact that the administration decided not to use the same term as the rest of the country? As if they just so happen to have the only experts who settled on the “ISIL” translation.
What is this “there’s no difference” b.s.? There’s not much difference between a democracy and a republic, since republics most often are representative democracies and hardly any democracy is purely majoritarian. Nevertheless, people hardly ever refer to our system of government as a republic, and either have a motive in pushing the word “democracy” or are the unconscious creatures of those who do. Likewise, some people throw a fit when our system isn’t referred to as a “republic,” even though they believe in nearly all the tenets of democracy.
Point is, words are weapons in the struggle for power, and they mean as much as they make people feel in day to day political squabbling as what’s written in dictionaries. It’s all well to float above politics and tell us what words mean, but aside from the fact that Pipes is an ideological hack who’s long sold his soul to the day to day, what people really want to know is why Obama uses an acronym different from the rest of the country, not the etymology of “Levant.”
The difference reflects the hopes of the Sultan in Washington. ISIL- Islamic State in the Levant includes Israel. The Sultan is being forced to drop some bombs and is doing that as sparingly as possible. He doesn’t want to hurt his heroes and coreligionists. He also intends that if ISIS(L) wins out then the Islamic Levant will include a destroyed Israel.
He has not yet failed in Iraq and Syria. ISIS is not yet defeated.
LOL. We’ll said!
SA vs SS comes to mind. They’re both evil.
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