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The Pentagon didn't start calling it the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) until 2017. Prior to then, it was the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL
by MithrilTuxedo 8y ago
The Pentagon didn't start calling it the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) until 2017. Prior to then, it was the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
Worth noting that the Islamic State has preferred being called ISIS. I think calling them ISIL was being done in part to annoy them.
- jpatokal 8y agoNo, it's more to do with the ambiguity of the Arabic original ad-Dawlah al-Islāmiyah fī 'l-ʿIrāq wa-sh-Shām. The "Sham" bit here can be refer either to the present day state of Syria, hence ISIS; or the historical greater Syria aka Levant, hence ISIL. However, the group internally dropped the qualified some time ago, now it's just Islamic State, with the obvious implication that it's the global state for true believers. Wikipedia goes into all this in detail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_the_Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_Levant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_the_Islamic_State_of_...
- probably_wrong 8y agoThere was a tweet about the poor NSA intern who would be tasked with the code to identify whether "is" referred to the organization or the verb. The paranoid side of me always assumed that the rebranding to Isis could have been suggested by the Pentagon to news organizations for that reason.