The French Foreign Ministry announced last week that it would no longer be using the term Islamic State to refer to the notorious militant group that has occupied sections of Iraq and Syria. In place of the term, already in widespread use throughout the world, the French foreign ministry will henceforth refer to the group by its Arabic acronym, DAESH, which stands for al-Dawla al-Islamiya al-Iraq al-Sham (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant).
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, urged journalists and members of the media to do the same, saying: “This is a terrorist group and not a state. I do not recommend using the term Islamic State because it blurs the lines between Islam, Muslims and Islamists. The Arabs call it ‘Daesh’ and I will be calling them the ‘Daesh cutthroats’.”
What’s in a name?
The French government’s stance on the issue is the most high profile among several recent attempts to update the nomenclature used to refer to militant groups that use religious labels. “[The] repetition of certain phrases, particularly those that tie in religious identity and violence, is problematic because it creates in the readers’ subconscious a link between religion and the perpetrators of heinous acts,” said Elina Noor, an Assistant Director of Foreign Policy and Security Studies at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies in Kuala Lumpur. “It also cedes the discourse to these militant groups.”
In recent weeks, some heads of state have taken a similar view. UK Prime Minister David Cameron claimed that IS “are not Muslims, but Monsters”, while US President Barack Obama clarified that they are “neither Islamic, nor a State”. Top-level religious authorities have also weighed in on the issue, with Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh branding terrorist groups the “enemy No.1” of Islam. Likewise, Egypt’s Al Azhar University, among the foremost leaders in Sunni Islam, has urged the foreign media to stop referring to the militants as Islamic State.
Western media organisations such as The Associated Press have begun revising their approaches to labelling the group, while Arabic news outlets continue to refer to the group exclusively as Daesh.
Much to the militant’s chagrin, the word has begun to be used as a synonym for bigot in many Arab countries.
Pointless vs. practical
But despite many endorsements, the attempt to combat militant groups like Daesh by utilising the power of naming and political language is not without its critics. Scott Atran, an anthropologist at the University of Michigan and Oxford University, who specialises in the study of terrorism, is sceptical about the effort. “It’s basically a matter of propaganda by our own side, our side being the US, members of the EU, and various others, to deny legitimacy to the Islamic State,” he said. “It fits a convenient narrative for us to look at these groups and brush them aside as crass, or crazy, by putting them into brackets so that we don’t have to deal with them intellectually.”
The truth, Atran argues, is that IS often appeals to impressionable young people, living on the margins of their respective societies, who end up seeking it out “on their own, searching for glory”.
He added, “The aim of de-legitimising them by using some words over others, rather than through cultivating a strategy and a set of alternative ideas, is pretty hopeless.”
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French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, urged journalists and members of the media to do the same, saying: “This is a terrorist group and not a state. I do not recommend using the term Islamic State because it blurs the lines between Islam, Muslims and Islamists. The Arabs call it ‘Daesh’ and I will be calling them the ‘Daesh cutthroats’.”
What’s in a name?
The French government’s stance on the issue is the most high profile among several recent attempts to update the nomenclature used to refer to militant groups that use religious labels. “[The] repetition of certain phrases, particularly those that tie in religious identity and violence, is problematic because it creates in the readers’ subconscious a link between religion and the perpetrators of heinous acts,” said Elina Noor, an Assistant Director of Foreign Policy and Security Studies at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies in Kuala Lumpur. “It also cedes the discourse to these militant groups.”
In recent weeks, some heads of state have taken a similar view. UK Prime Minister David Cameron claimed that IS “are not Muslims, but Monsters”, while US President Barack Obama clarified that they are “neither Islamic, nor a State”. Top-level religious authorities have also weighed in on the issue, with Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh branding terrorist groups the “enemy No.1” of Islam. Likewise, Egypt’s Al Azhar University, among the foremost leaders in Sunni Islam, has urged the foreign media to stop referring to the militants as Islamic State.
Western media organisations such as The Associated Press have begun revising their approaches to labelling the group, while Arabic news outlets continue to refer to the group exclusively as Daesh.
Much to the militant’s chagrin, the word has begun to be used as a synonym for bigot in many Arab countries.
Pointless vs. practical
But despite many endorsements, the attempt to combat militant groups like Daesh by utilising the power of naming and political language is not without its critics. Scott Atran, an anthropologist at the University of Michigan and Oxford University, who specialises in the study of terrorism, is sceptical about the effort. “It’s basically a matter of propaganda by our own side, our side being the US, members of the EU, and various others, to deny legitimacy to the Islamic State,” he said. “It fits a convenient narrative for us to look at these groups and brush them aside as crass, or crazy, by putting them into brackets so that we don’t have to deal with them intellectually.”
The truth, Atran argues, is that IS often appeals to impressionable young people, living on the margins of their respective societies, who end up seeking it out “on their own, searching for glory”.
He added, “The aim of de-legitimising them by using some words over others, rather than through cultivating a strategy and a set of alternative ideas, is pretty hopeless.”
