
Words matter in ‘ISIS’ war, so use ‘Daesh’ - keitmo
http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2014/10/09/words-matter-isis-war-use-daesh/V85GYEuasEEJgrUun0dMUP/story.html
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afshin
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
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
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.

~~~
r-w
I think you were referring to "pro-choice" versus "pro- _life_ ".

~~~
afshin
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)

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ggreer
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.

~~~
reedlaw
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.

~~~
ggreer
There is an Egyptian goddess named Isis. Many women have the name as well.
It's much less likely to be mispronounced than Daesh.

Also, autocorrect usually leaves all-caps acronyms unmolested.

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sfRattan
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.

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waffle_ss
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.

~~~
tempestn
Why would you want to be neutral toward a group that's stated goal is
essentially to usher in the apocalypse through conquest, rape, torture, and
murder? A name that's both accurate and insulting seems like the ideal term to
use. Certainly better than meaningless insults like "cowardly" that are thrown
around.

~~~
gizmo686
Legitimacy. If you appear neutral in your descriptions, then when you say that
their stated goal is to "usher in the apocalypse through conquest, rape,
torture, and murder?", people are more likely to take that seriously and
consider for themselves how to view them (and likely arrive at the obvious
conclusion).

However, if you appear biased, then people are more likely to question the
validity of what you are saying itself.

~~~
tempestn
Good point, as are waffle's. Thanks.

~~~
JeremyHoward
They want to be called Islamic State because first of all it gives them
legitimacy and it also helps with their recruitment because any action taken
against them would automatically be called a 'War against Islam" which is
exactly what they want to portray it as, they want it to be the West coming up
against Islam. [2]

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4ouhpOPenI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4ouhpOPenI)
(Queen Rania And Arianna Huffington Discuss ISIS And What's Working In The
Middle East)

------
Gatsky
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-
isi...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-
wants/384980/)

~~~
AJ007
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.

------
Karunamon
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
Since they refer to themselves as ISIS or ISIL, it'd be odd to call them
something else.

~~~
mjevans
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.

~~~
yongjik
"Call him Voldemort, Harry. Always use the proper name for things. Fear of a
name increases fear of the thing itself."

\- Albus Dumbledore

~~~
serf
“A nickname is the hardest stone that the devil can throw at a man.”

― William Hazlitt

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kephra
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

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empressplay
Need to add (2014) at end of title.

~~~
Animats
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.)

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annacollins
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.

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Alex3917
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
_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".

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jugad
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.

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

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

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

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adamclayman
Modified post in response:

[https://plus.google.com/111448954253951919974/posts/Ujs3zjbs...](https://plus.google.com/111448954253951919974/posts/Ujs3zjbseDN)

