The difference among the various terms for the Islamic State is not trivial. The caliphate wants to be called by the name it calls itself--ISIS/L--and establish its legitimacy. Journalists, pundits, even conservatives protesting this proposed terminological shift are paying a great deal of attention to the term Daesh that both French President François Hollande and Secretary of State John Kerry have used of late. An excellent article by Arab translator Alice Guthrie wonders why confusion over the terminology is so mysterious to the anglophone press, outlining various widespread misconceptions:
That daesh is an Arabic word in its own right (rather than an acronym) meaning ‘a group of bigots who impose their will on others’ That it can be ‘differently conjugated’ to mean either the phrase above or ‘to trample and crush’ That one of the words in the acronym also means ‘to trample or crush’ That it is an insult or swearword in its own right That is has different meanings in the pluralShe continues that it is the fact that it is an acronym that is so offensive.
And so if the word is basically 'ISIS', but in Arabic, why are the people it describes in such a fury about it? Because they hear it, quite rightly, as a challenge to their legitimacy: a dismissal of their aspirations to define Islamic practice, to be 'a state for all Muslims’ and – crucially – as a refusal to acknowledge and address them as such. They want to be addressed as exactly what they claim to be, by people so in awe of them that they use the pompous, long and delusional name created by the group, not some funny-sounding made-up word. And here is the very simple key point that has been overlooked in all the anglophone press coverage I’ve seen: in Arabic, acronyms are not anything like as widely used as they are in English, and so arabophones are not as used to hearing them as anglophones are. Thus, the creation and use of a title that stands out as a nonsense neologism for an organisation like this one is inherently funny, disrespectful, and ultimately threatening of the organisation’s status.
The most important point is that in Arabic Daesh is easily seen as satirical:
So the insult picked up on by Daesh is not just that the name makes them sound little, silly, and powerless, but that it implies they are monsters, and that they are made-up.
Charlie Hebdo’s cartoonists’ and editors’ crime, for which they were massacred, was not just their rendition of the Prophet Allah, but that they were satirical, in ways that the non-francophone press did not always understand, leading to accusations of racism. The lack of humor of America’s conservatives in the case of Daesh is telling. One even accused our Muslim President of further confusing those of us who “speak American” by using an Arab term. Grandiose titles do lend themselves to satire. The American press appears to be coming on board, notably The Boston Globe. So let’s use Daesh, to satirize the terrorists, to prevent them from taking themselves too seriously, and to further confuse those who speak no other language than Murican.