Should we ditch Islamic State in favour of Daesh?

The BBC came under attack from Conservative MPs yesterday over the way it reports stories involving Islamic State and, in particular, over its use of the term “Islamic State”.

Leader of the Commons Chris Grayling said the corporation should adopt the same approach when reporting threats to the security of Britain as it did to reporting during the second world war.

“During the second world war the BBC was a beacon of fact. It was not expected to be impartial between Britain and Germany,” Mr Grayling told MPs.

“Today it should be a beacon of fact – but it is not expected to be impartial about threats to the security and safety of the lives and limbs of the people of this nation.”

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Dignifying extremism

He made the comments in response to a question from Conservative backbencher Rehman Chishti who, along with more than 120 other MPs, wrote to BBC Director-General Lord Hall asking the corporation to use the word “Daesh” when referring to the Islamic State (IS) group.

The argument is that the words “Islamic State” dignify the extreme jihadist group that it represents, as well as being a misnomer – since the caliphate that IS claims to embody barely exists as a state according to conventional definitions.

In his response, Lord Hall said using Daesh instead of IS “would not preserve the BBC’s impartiality”. In fact, most other UK news organisations, including Channel 4 News, use the term Islamic State, sometimes with the caveats “Islamic State group” or “so-called Islamic State”.

Map of Greece, the Mediterranean and the Levant, from 1544 (Getty Images)

Levant v al-Sham

In France, IS is already commonly referred to as Daesh. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius has argued for its use because it lacks the respectability associated with the words “Islamic” and “State”.

In English-speaking countries, by contrast, Islamic State is used alongside IS, Isis (meaning “Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham”) and Isil (which stands for “Islamic State in the Levant”).

The difference between Isis and Isil is clearly geographical: where the former encompasses just two countries, the latter stands for a large area in the eastern Mediterranean including Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Israel and the Palestinian territories.

Isil is now the acronym used by, among others, President Obama and the United Nations. David Cameron told prime minister’s questions this week that Islamic State should be referred to as Isil.

But some say there is little difference between Isis and Isil because the “al-Sham” that is the final letter in Isis stands for “greater Syria” – in other words, the levant.

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Extensively used

So what does Daesh mean? In fact, it is extensively used among Arabic speakers across the Middle East – in the media and on the street – to represent IS. It is an Arabic acronym derived from the phrase “al Dawlah al-Islameyah fi Iraq wal-Sham” – literally “Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham”.

But as well as being an Arabic acronym, “daesh” means a person who creates disunity. In addition, it sounds in Arabic like the word “daas”, meaning someone who crushes something underfoot – with overtones of humiliation and a lack of dignity.

Arabic speakers are fully aware of the negative connotations of Daesh when they use it, and of the implied insult to the organisation. On the relatively rare occasions when an Arabic speaker wants to refer to IS in a non-pejorative way, he or she uses the phrase “al-Dawlah al-Islameyah” – literally “Islamic State”.