7 ms·

Words matter in ‘ISIS’ war, so use ‘Daesh’

122 points by keitmo 11y ago

adamclayman 11y ago
Modified post in response: https://plus.google.com/111448954253951919974/posts/Ujs3zjbseDN https://plus.google.com/111448954253951919974/posts/Ujs3zjbs...
afshin 11y ago
In much of the Muslim world, it is common practice to call people who die in war "martyrs". The Arabic word is "shahid" and just like the word "martyr", it literally means "witness". These are people who are considered basically heaven-bound. They skip the queue, they don't need to worry about their past sins, because they died in the service of their faith. This belief is widely accepted, although it varies exactly whom is a martyr. But I suspect that as long as the very idea of straight-to-heaven martyrdom exists among the vast majority of Muslims, smaller offshoot death cults are almost inevitable. It's a pretty linear progression. Language does matter and the words used to describe people who fight and die violently matters a lot.
- ci5er 11y ago
  Are you describing something, diagnosing something or prescribing something? Based on this comment, what do you want us to learn/know/understand or do?
  - afshin 11y ago
    I'm pointing out a parallel with the premise of the original article. The way people describe and name things shapes how it is perceived and shapes its acceptability. If you're familiar with American politics, consider the left's phrase "pro-choice" vs the right's depiction of the same position as "pro-abortion". They both know they're describing the same thing, and both are attempting to win the battle of hearts and minds.
    - ci5er 11y ago
      That's an excellent distinction. Are you sure it maps? EDIT: It may well map. Thank you.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - r-w 11y ago
      I think you were referring to "pro-choice" versus "pro-life".
      - afshin 11y ago
        I wasn't referring to "pro-life". While that is one of the right's phrases for it, I was specifically referring to the more extreme usage "pro-abortion". Here is an example: http://www.issues4life.org/pdfs/news_20100307a.pdf http://www.issues4life.org/pdfs/news_20100307a.pdf
obrero 11y ago
When the French air force began dropping bombs on Syrians last month ( http://www.france24.com/en/20151109-france-syria-strike-islamic-state-oil-facility-military http://www.france24.com/en/20151109-france-syria-strike-isla... ) we didn't hear such a hue and cry in the corporate media about it. Only celebration. Now the Syrians are doing to their "former" colonial masters what the French have been doing to them for the past month - bombing them. France is reaping what it sowed.
- Karunamon 11y ago
  In the off chance you're not trolling - surely you see a difference between an air strike on enemy-controlled infrastructure vs indiscriminate killing of civilians?
  - obrero 11y ago
    Indiscriminate killing of civilians? Like when the French opened fire on crowds marching for Syrian independence in 1945 (like the French did in Algeria and elsewhere?) Like the French bomb and kill people on Greenpeace boats?
    - Karunamon 11y ago
      I see, in your morality it's acceptable to kill innocents (rather than, yknow, the people responsible, which would be at least logical) in response to killing innocents 70 years ago?
      - tinco 11y ago
        What are you talking about? Where does he say it's acceptable to kill innocents? It's obviously never, so why not point out that France has no clean slate? Just that it happened 70 years ago (other events like the Greenpeace bomb are much more recent) doesn't make it right. You can't just say just because France was attacked two days ago now they're suddenly holy. The attacks on France were despicable, as were the actions of France in the past. As were many actions of many if not most of the countries currently in existance. Countries usually are wrought from blood. But it's not the blood of countries that is spilt, it's the blood of civilians, individual human beings whose part in the operations of the countries is indirect at best. That doesn't mean the people should not be held accountable for the actions of their elected governments, I think they definitely should. I think it's perfectly acceptable to be angry at the average frenchmen for their indifference at the Greenpeace bombing, as it is acceptable to be angry at them for taking part in the bombing of IS targets in Syria. But no one in their right mind is suggesting that children at a concert should suffer horrific death for it..
Karunamon 11y ago
Do they? The article's thesis appears to be some nebulous thing along the lines of calling the group this pseudo-derogatory name is going to have some impact or another. Put another and much more snarky way: This is meaningless, feel-good sophistry.
- refurb 11y ago
  Since they refer to themselves as ISIS or ISIL, it'd be odd to call them something else.
  - mjevans 11y ago
    No, it's a great idea. It denies them recognition and legitimacy. If we described domestic terrorists (bomb makers, mass shooters, killers, etc) as 'that waste that killed a bunch of people in X during Y' and never /ever/ published their names (in the news anyway, court transcripts would need to show them) then it would make those actions a lot less sexy. In that same way, we should also call the extremists in the middle east that; possibly picking an arbitrary flavor word that is of no relation to them just so we can make a distinction. There are /quite/ a few extremist groups in that area of the world.
    - Karunamon 11y ago
      I'm not sure that follows, or for that matter that there's any evidence to support your position. These attacks are not the terrorist group form of advertising, getting the name out in the MSM? No, they are to drive home some kind of ideological point - that's going to happen whether you call them "ISIS" or "fuzzy pickles".
    - gdwatson 11y ago
      Your position is that propaganda is useful and we should structure our speech for maximum utility? That way lies Newspeak.
    - pessimizer 11y ago
      > It denies them recognition and legitimacy. This doesn't mean anything. We recognize them as a legitimate threat because of the land they've taken and the people they've murdered. This reeks of the "homicide bombers" campaign, or the people complaining that "Xmas" takes the Christ out of Christmas. If anything, it's even sexier that the greatest powers in the world are so terrified that they refuse to even say their name - is it for fear that they might appear? It was disappointing to me that the SNP chose to make forcing the BBC to use "Daesh" their first issue after the elections.
Alex3917 11y ago
The real issue is that the media and politicians use the term ISIS instead of IS because it's better for SEO. Basically we now choose which foreigners to genocide based on the vagaries of whatever terms Google Panda currently recognizes as stopwords.
- untog 11y ago
  The real issue is that the media and politicians use the term ISIS instead of IS because it's better for SEO Got a citation for that? Even if what you're saying were true, it could be more charitably described as "not using a term that shares a spelling with one of the mostly commonly used words in the English language".
waffle_ss 11y ago
The Islamic State has specifically said they don't limit themselves to Syria and Iraq (they're trying to establish a caliphate), so the Daesh acronym the article is pushing is incorrect. If you want to call them something they don't want to be called that's fine, but you're not being neutral.
- ChuckMcM 11y ago
  But that is kind of the point. Like calling people of color 'boy' in the more racially charged times of our (sadly fairly recent past) it is a powerful insult to someone, challenging them on many levels. Calling this group daesh challenges everything about them, their legitimacy, their aspirations, and their leadership. That it has deeper meaning in Arabic is icing on the cake as far as crafting an insult goes.
  - nyolfen 11y ago
    maybe, but calling them 'isis' in standard american english makes them sound like a supervillain imo, though it may be too subtle to carry through after a few years. but i like the feeling that simply calling them by a common acronym invokes, sounding obviously evil
  - politician 11y ago
    Why is calling ISIS Daesh more politically correct than calling other groups by derogatory names? When I see people on CNN pushing the "daesh" terminology, all I can think of is what an uproar it would be if they were talking about Africans, Asians, Appalachian Whites, or some other group. Do we really think name-calling is the way to stop them? It's juvenile.
    - dcherman 11y ago
      Are you really going to pull out the PC card for ISIS/Daesh? I'm sure I'll be downvoted for this, but I really couldn't care less about their feelings. At all.
- afarrell 11y ago
annacollins 11y ago
Daesh is a relatively small group, and propaganda is central to its growth strategy. Whether hijacking popular Twitter hashtags or using little known distribution channels to post videos to YouTube, their leadership knows that the war of words online is just as key to increasing its power and influence as the actual gruesome acts they commit on the ground.
aprilzero 11y ago
This seems like a great idea. What if we all decided to start calling them Idiot Squad or something?
Gatsky 11y ago
This seems like a bit of a sideshow. I would rather spend my time reading this incredible article: What ISIS Really Wants http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-wants/384980/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isi...
- AJ007 11y ago
  Decades in to the US Middle Eastern military excursions very few Americans appears to know much of anything about what is going on - either geographically, politically, or historically. There does not appear to be agreement among the top civilian and military leadership or intelligence agencies, right or wrong, as to what is going on, why, or what to do. Hollywood likes black and white narratives, things like Nazis vs the rest of the world. The mass media, pundits, and politicians follow this path. Much of what has occurred has been heavily politicized and yet both Republican and Democrats completely inoculate each other to the bad decision making because it is so damning to not just the Bush administration but the Obama administration as well. Even today I find very few people who understand the conflicts between the Sunni and Shia. The mental model of what is going on in most American's heads is kind of like a Donald Duck cartoon during World War II. There may now be very few paths where the outcome is not an Islamist State (probably the best of all word choices) of one shape or another. The paths that successfully prevent it may be even worse. Both the Bush and Obama administrations repeatedly outlined their goals for democracy in the Muslim world. They are going to get it. Of course, there is nothing preventing a democracy from voting to remove basic human rights. The only thing I'm certain of at this point is an Islamist State poses a massive threat to the UAE, a big threat to India (because of the nuclear situation with Pakistan), a large threat to Israel, a pretty big threat to Europe, a small threat to Russia, and minimal threat to the US - which makes it ironic who is calling the shots.
- yhager 11y ago
  This is a great read, thanks for the link. Only problem for me is that it clearly states they have no interest in performing terror attacks in the west (although they would condone it). I'm not sure how it lines up with what just happened in Paris.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
kephra 11y ago
Its interesting to read Daesh in Boston Globe, a western propaganda media. The usage of the degrading Daesh is very common in Russian friendly media like vineyardsaker or southfront. Well, those old Russian propaganda experts knew, that its important to deny them their prefered words like "Islamic" and "State", but instead call them with a bad word, that accidentally is also an acronym of their name. PS: consortiumnews is also using Daesh
ggreer 11y ago
I'm not a fan of this for several reasons: 1. If you say, "ISIS", everyone knows what you're talking about. Not so for "Daesh." 2. Anyone can read "ISIS" and know how to pronounce it. How does one pronounce "Daesh"? Is it daysh? Dash? Dah-esh? I don't know. 3. We'll still need to know and use the old names. There are thousands of historical news articles using the terms ISIS, ISIL, IS, The Islamic State, etc. Googling for them is already hard enough. It reminds me of xkcd's Standards (http://xkcd.com/927/ http://xkcd.com/927/). 4. "Daesh" autocorrects to other things on iOS, Android, and Windows 10. It was very annoying to write this comment, as I was constantly un-correcting "dash". The author makes some good points, but I think they're outweighed by the disadvantages I mentioned. Unfortunately, the cat is out of the bag. We now have yet another name for ISIS. Edit: I just thought of another one. If "Daesh" takes off, people may think those who use "ISIS" or "The Islamic State" are sympathetic toward the group. I'm certain I'll slip up in conversation and have to dig myself out of a hole.
- r-w 11y ago
  tl;dr: Too little, too late.
- tempestn 11y ago
  I can understand these concerns, but honestly I feel like they are outweighed by the potential benefits. First of all, certainly on my Android keyboard, correcting autocorrect once teaches it the new word, and it will then always use it if spelled correctly, and even begin to learn when to correct to it. So that's a pretty minor annoyance. #1 is an issue certainly, but if you run across someone who doesn't know the acronym, you can summarize the thoughts of this article. Plus, the hope is that it catches on, so that most people will end up knowing it. Presumably if that happens, #2 would also be taken care of as a consensus develops. #3 yes, true, this will make it slightly more difficult. But still, ISIS|ISIL|Daesh isn't too tough either. The name sounds trivial, but I don't think it's a stretch to believe that if this name actually became widespread, it could have a significant (if small) impact on "Daesh's" recruitment, which would seem to be worth the annoyance.
- reedlaw 11y ago
  At one point no one knew what ISIS meant. This article is trying to educate about use of a better term. There are plenty of words that go out of style. "ISIS" is no more pronounceable than Daesh. Is-is? Ice-iss? Eye...Ess...Eye...Ess? Auto-correct dictionaries should reflect modern usage, not the other way around. The advantages of the term Daesh are clear from the article. None of the disadvantages listed seem significant in comparison to the strategic value of using a term that accurately reflects how most of the world views the matter as opposed to a term that favors the terrorist group.
empressplay 11y ago
Need to add (2014) at end of title.
- Animats 11y ago
  Good point. This viewpoint is a bit dated, as the Islamic State now does act like a government in the areas it controls. (From a military perspective, it's easier to attack a territorial government than a terrorist movement, especially if you assume everyone who hasn't left supports that government.)
sfRattan 11y ago
Words do matter, but I'm of the opinion that changing the term for a thing doesn't change the essence of the thing, or what people think of that thing... At least very much. Some examples: [Note: I'm citing these examples to point out that a shift in terminology does not usually result in a shift in attitudes. Which means... I'm not citing these examples to start an argument on the particular topics of the examples.] The Rote Armee Fraktion / Baader-Meinhof-Gruppe. They were violent Marxist terrorists in West Germany from the late sixties and continuing about two decades. The German government refused to refer to the group by its chosen name. Baader-Meinhof Group implies a criminal syndicate tied to two lead personalities, and shoves away implications of ideological motives. The RAF, however, remains to this day mostly known by its own chosen name. Homosexual / Gay. "Gay" was originally taken up by men in the sixties to refer to their sexual identity as something less medical than "homosexual" (then defined as a mental illness) and less negative/alienating than "queer." But it came to be an insult, used by the sort of people who assume the essence of homosexuality to be bad... So any word for it becomes an insult among such people. Liberal / Progressive. This example is specific to American politics: in most of the rest of the world, these words have separate meanings and are not conflated. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose ideas would have previously been called "progressive", identified himself as a "liberal" loudly and often, cementing a shift in the word's common-use meaning. At the time, it made him more palatable to voters who would have balked at a the more radical implications of "progressive." But now, the same people who disliked progressivism dislike liberalism (American) on the same basis. Moron / Idiot / Imbecile / Retarded. Each of these words was originally a clinical term with a specific meaning. Now each is an insult, and new clinical terms have been decided upon by the medical community in aggregate.
jugad 11y ago
Daesh is like the the hindi word for "country" written in english. The spelling is something between Dash and Desh... Daesh is the closest and its a poor substitute, if the aim is to not call them a state. Now, we are just calling them a country.
jessaustin 11y ago
Also, the real "ISIS" is headed by Malory Archer, not Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
imaginenore 11y ago
That's like trying to start a campaign to call bullies "assailants" instead of "bullies". It will not change anything.

122 points by keitmo 11y ago

Modified post in response: https://plus.google.com/111448954253951919974/posts/Ujs3zjbseDN https://plus.google.com/111448954253951919974/posts/Ujs3zjbs...

afshin 11y ago

In much of the Muslim world, it is common practice to call people who die in war "martyrs". The Arabic word is "shahid" and just like the word "martyr", it literally means "witness". These are people who are considered basically heaven-bound. They skip the queue, they don't need to worry about their past sins, because they died in the service of their faith. This belief is widely accepted, although it varies exactly whom is a martyr. But I suspect that as long as the very idea of straight-to-heaven martyrdom exists among the vast majority of Muslims, smaller offshoot death cults are almost inevitable. It's a pretty linear progression. Language does matter and the words used to describe people who fight and die violently matters a lot.

ci5er 11y ago
Are you describing something, diagnosing something or prescribing something? Based on this comment, what do you want us to learn/know/understand or do?
- afshin 11y ago
  I'm pointing out a parallel with the premise of the original article. The way people describe and name things shapes how it is perceived and shapes its acceptability. If you're familiar with American politics, consider the left's phrase "pro-choice" vs the right's depiction of the same position as "pro-abortion". They both know they're describing the same thing, and both are attempting to win the battle of hearts and minds.
  - ci5er 11y ago
    That's an excellent distinction. Are you sure it maps? EDIT: It may well map. Thank you.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - r-w 11y ago
    I think you were referring to "pro-choice" versus "pro-life".
    - afshin 11y ago
      I wasn't referring to "pro-life". While that is one of the right's phrases for it, I was specifically referring to the more extreme usage "pro-abortion". Here is an example: http://www.issues4life.org/pdfs/news_20100307a.pdf http://www.issues4life.org/pdfs/news_20100307a.pdf

obrero 11y ago

When the French air force began dropping bombs on Syrians last month ( http://www.france24.com/en/20151109-france-syria-strike-islamic-state-oil-facility-military http://www.france24.com/en/20151109-france-syria-strike-isla... ) we didn't hear such a hue and cry in the corporate media about it. Only celebration. Now the Syrians are doing to their "former" colonial masters what the French have been doing to them for the past month - bombing them. France is reaping what it sowed.

Karunamon 11y ago
In the off chance you're not trolling - surely you see a difference between an air strike on enemy-controlled infrastructure vs indiscriminate killing of civilians?
- obrero 11y ago
  Indiscriminate killing of civilians? Like when the French opened fire on crowds marching for Syrian independence in 1945 (like the French did in Algeria and elsewhere?) Like the French bomb and kill people on Greenpeace boats?
  - Karunamon 11y ago
    I see, in your morality it's acceptable to kill innocents (rather than, yknow, the people responsible, which would be at least logical) in response to killing innocents 70 years ago?
    - tinco 11y ago
      What are you talking about? Where does he say it's acceptable to kill innocents? It's obviously never, so why not point out that France has no clean slate? Just that it happened 70 years ago (other events like the Greenpeace bomb are much more recent) doesn't make it right. You can't just say just because France was attacked two days ago now they're suddenly holy. The attacks on France were despicable, as were the actions of France in the past. As were many actions of many if not most of the countries currently in existance. Countries usually are wrought from blood. But it's not the blood of countries that is spilt, it's the blood of civilians, individual human beings whose part in the operations of the countries is indirect at best. That doesn't mean the people should not be held accountable for the actions of their elected governments, I think they definitely should. I think it's perfectly acceptable to be angry at the average frenchmen for their indifference at the Greenpeace bombing, as it is acceptable to be angry at them for taking part in the bombing of IS targets in Syria. But no one in their right mind is suggesting that children at a concert should suffer horrific death for it..

Karunamon 11y ago

Do they? The article's thesis appears to be some nebulous thing along the lines of calling the group this pseudo-derogatory name is going to have some impact or another. Put another and much more snarky way: This is meaningless, feel-good sophistry.

refurb 11y ago
Since they refer to themselves as ISIS or ISIL, it'd be odd to call them something else.
- mjevans 11y ago
  No, it's a great idea. It denies them recognition and legitimacy. If we described domestic terrorists (bomb makers, mass shooters, killers, etc) as 'that waste that killed a bunch of people in X during Y' and never /ever/ published their names (in the news anyway, court transcripts would need to show them) then it would make those actions a lot less sexy. In that same way, we should also call the extremists in the middle east that; possibly picking an arbitrary flavor word that is of no relation to them just so we can make a distinction. There are /quite/ a few extremist groups in that area of the world.
  - Karunamon 11y ago
    I'm not sure that follows, or for that matter that there's any evidence to support your position. These attacks are not the terrorist group form of advertising, getting the name out in the MSM? No, they are to drive home some kind of ideological point - that's going to happen whether you call them "ISIS" or "fuzzy pickles".
  - gdwatson 11y ago
    Your position is that propaganda is useful and we should structure our speech for maximum utility? That way lies Newspeak.
  - pessimizer 11y ago
    > It denies them recognition and legitimacy. This doesn't mean anything. We recognize them as a legitimate threat because of the land they've taken and the people they've murdered. This reeks of the "homicide bombers" campaign, or the people complaining that "Xmas" takes the Christ out of Christmas. If anything, it's even sexier that the greatest powers in the world are so terrified that they refuse to even say their name - is it for fear that they might appear? It was disappointing to me that the SNP chose to make forcing the BBC to use "Daesh" their first issue after the elections.

Alex3917 11y ago

The real issue is that the media and politicians use the term ISIS instead of IS because it's better for SEO. Basically we now choose which foreigners to genocide based on the vagaries of whatever terms Google Panda currently recognizes as stopwords.

untog 11y ago
The real issue is that the media and politicians use the term ISIS instead of IS because it's better for SEO Got a citation for that? Even if what you're saying were true, it could be more charitably described as "not using a term that shares a spelling with one of the mostly commonly used words in the English language".

waffle_ss 11y ago

The Islamic State has specifically said they don't limit themselves to Syria and Iraq (they're trying to establish a caliphate), so the Daesh acronym the article is pushing is incorrect. If you want to call them something they don't want to be called that's fine, but you're not being neutral.

ChuckMcM 11y ago
But that is kind of the point. Like calling people of color 'boy' in the more racially charged times of our (sadly fairly recent past) it is a powerful insult to someone, challenging them on many levels. Calling this group daesh challenges everything about them, their legitimacy, their aspirations, and their leadership. That it has deeper meaning in Arabic is icing on the cake as far as crafting an insult goes.
- nyolfen 11y ago
  maybe, but calling them 'isis' in standard american english makes them sound like a supervillain imo, though it may be too subtle to carry through after a few years. but i like the feeling that simply calling them by a common acronym invokes, sounding obviously evil
- politician 11y ago
  Why is calling ISIS Daesh more politically correct than calling other groups by derogatory names? When I see people on CNN pushing the "daesh" terminology, all I can think of is what an uproar it would be if they were talking about Africans, Asians, Appalachian Whites, or some other group. Do we really think name-calling is the way to stop them? It's juvenile.
  - dcherman 11y ago
    Are you really going to pull out the PC card for ISIS/Daesh? I'm sure I'll be downvoted for this, but I really couldn't care less about their feelings. At all.
afarrell 11y ago

annacollins 11y ago

Daesh is a relatively small group, and propaganda is central to its growth strategy. Whether hijacking popular Twitter hashtags or using little known distribution channels to post videos to YouTube, their leadership knows that the war of words online is just as key to increasing its power and influence as the actual gruesome acts they commit on the ground.

aprilzero 11y ago

This seems like a great idea. What if we all decided to start calling them Idiot Squad or something?

Gatsky 11y ago

This seems like a bit of a sideshow. I would rather spend my time reading this incredible article: What ISIS Really Wants http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-wants/384980/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isi...

AJ007 11y ago
Decades in to the US Middle Eastern military excursions very few Americans appears to know much of anything about what is going on - either geographically, politically, or historically. There does not appear to be agreement among the top civilian and military leadership or intelligence agencies, right or wrong, as to what is going on, why, or what to do. Hollywood likes black and white narratives, things like Nazis vs the rest of the world. The mass media, pundits, and politicians follow this path. Much of what has occurred has been heavily politicized and yet both Republican and Democrats completely inoculate each other to the bad decision making because it is so damning to not just the Bush administration but the Obama administration as well. Even today I find very few people who understand the conflicts between the Sunni and Shia. The mental model of what is going on in most American's heads is kind of like a Donald Duck cartoon during World War II. There may now be very few paths where the outcome is not an Islamist State (probably the best of all word choices) of one shape or another. The paths that successfully prevent it may be even worse. Both the Bush and Obama administrations repeatedly outlined their goals for democracy in the Muslim world. They are going to get it. Of course, there is nothing preventing a democracy from voting to remove basic human rights. The only thing I'm certain of at this point is an Islamist State poses a massive threat to the UAE, a big threat to India (because of the nuclear situation with Pakistan), a large threat to Israel, a pretty big threat to Europe, a small threat to Russia, and minimal threat to the US - which makes it ironic who is calling the shots.
yhager 11y ago
This is a great read, thanks for the link. Only problem for me is that it clearly states they have no interest in performing terror attacks in the west (although they would condone it). I'm not sure how it lines up with what just happened in Paris.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

kephra 11y ago

Its interesting to read Daesh in Boston Globe, a western propaganda media. The usage of the degrading Daesh is very common in Russian friendly media like vineyardsaker or southfront. Well, those old Russian propaganda experts knew, that its important to deny them their prefered words like "Islamic" and "State", but instead call them with a bad word, that accidentally is also an acronym of their name. PS: consortiumnews is also using Daesh

ggreer 11y ago

I'm not a fan of this for several reasons: 1. If you say, "ISIS", everyone knows what you're talking about. Not so for "Daesh." 2. Anyone can read "ISIS" and know how to pronounce it. How does one pronounce "Daesh"? Is it daysh? Dash? Dah-esh? I don't know. 3. We'll still need to know and use the old names. There are thousands of historical news articles using the terms ISIS, ISIL, IS, The Islamic State, etc. Googling for them is already hard enough. It reminds me of xkcd's Standards (http://xkcd.com/927/ http://xkcd.com/927/). 4. "Daesh" autocorrects to other things on iOS, Android, and Windows 10. It was very annoying to write this comment, as I was constantly un-correcting "dash". The author makes some good points, but I think they're outweighed by the disadvantages I mentioned. Unfortunately, the cat is out of the bag. We now have yet another name for ISIS. Edit: I just thought of another one. If "Daesh" takes off, people may think those who use "ISIS" or "The Islamic State" are sympathetic toward the group. I'm certain I'll slip up in conversation and have to dig myself out of a hole.

r-w 11y ago
tl;dr: Too little, too late.
tempestn 11y ago
I can understand these concerns, but honestly I feel like they are outweighed by the potential benefits. First of all, certainly on my Android keyboard, correcting autocorrect once teaches it the new word, and it will then always use it if spelled correctly, and even begin to learn when to correct to it. So that's a pretty minor annoyance. #1 is an issue certainly, but if you run across someone who doesn't know the acronym, you can summarize the thoughts of this article. Plus, the hope is that it catches on, so that most people will end up knowing it. Presumably if that happens, #2 would also be taken care of as a consensus develops. #3 yes, true, this will make it slightly more difficult. But still, ISIS|ISIL|Daesh isn't too tough either. The name sounds trivial, but I don't think it's a stretch to believe that if this name actually became widespread, it could have a significant (if small) impact on "Daesh's" recruitment, which would seem to be worth the annoyance.
reedlaw 11y ago
At one point no one knew what ISIS meant. This article is trying to educate about use of a better term. There are plenty of words that go out of style. "ISIS" is no more pronounceable than Daesh. Is-is? Ice-iss? Eye...Ess...Eye...Ess? Auto-correct dictionaries should reflect modern usage, not the other way around. The advantages of the term Daesh are clear from the article. None of the disadvantages listed seem significant in comparison to the strategic value of using a term that accurately reflects how most of the world views the matter as opposed to a term that favors the terrorist group.

empressplay 11y ago

Need to add (2014) at end of title.

Animats 11y ago
Good point. This viewpoint is a bit dated, as the Islamic State now does act like a government in the areas it controls. (From a military perspective, it's easier to attack a territorial government than a terrorist movement, especially if you assume everyone who hasn't left supports that government.)

sfRattan 11y ago

Words do matter, but I'm of the opinion that changing the term for a thing doesn't change the essence of the thing, or what people think of that thing... At least very much. Some examples: [Note: I'm citing these examples to point out that a shift in terminology does not usually result in a shift in attitudes. Which means... I'm not citing these examples to start an argument on the particular topics of the examples.] The Rote Armee Fraktion / Baader-Meinhof-Gruppe. They were violent Marxist terrorists in West Germany from the late sixties and continuing about two decades. The German government refused to refer to the group by its chosen name. Baader-Meinhof Group implies a criminal syndicate tied to two lead personalities, and shoves away implications of ideological motives. The RAF, however, remains to this day mostly known by its own chosen name. Homosexual / Gay. "Gay" was originally taken up by men in the sixties to refer to their sexual identity as something less medical than "homosexual" (then defined as a mental illness) and less negative/alienating than "queer." But it came to be an insult, used by the sort of people who assume the essence of homosexuality to be bad... So any word for it becomes an insult among such people. Liberal / Progressive. This example is specific to American politics: in most of the rest of the world, these words have separate meanings and are not conflated. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose ideas would have previously been called "progressive", identified himself as a "liberal" loudly and often, cementing a shift in the word's common-use meaning. At the time, it made him more palatable to voters who would have balked at a the more radical implications of "progressive." But now, the same people who disliked progressivism dislike liberalism (American) on the same basis. Moron / Idiot / Imbecile / Retarded. Each of these words was originally a clinical term with a specific meaning. Now each is an insult, and new clinical terms have been decided upon by the medical community in aggregate.

jugad 11y ago

Daesh is like the the hindi word for "country" written in english. The spelling is something between Dash and Desh... Daesh is the closest and its a poor substitute, if the aim is to not call them a state. Now, we are just calling them a country.

jessaustin 11y ago

Also, the real "ISIS" is headed by Malory Archer, not Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

imaginenore 11y ago

That's like trying to start a campaign to call bullies "assailants" instead of "bullies". It will not change anything.