(This article first appeared in the legal magazine Lexpert)
Let’s Call the
Caliphate Wannabes Daesh – Because Names Matter
by
Howard Richler
“The Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, Roman nor an empire.” Voltaire
I had noticed that BBC News always adds the qualifier “so-called” when
describing the Islamic State. As I find this usage clumsy, I decided to
investigate why the BBC employs it. I
discovered that back in June 2015 a large number of British Members of
Parliament, from all the major parties, accused the BBC of legitimizing the
terrorist group by calling it “the Islamic State.” Even Prime Minister David
Cameron entered the fray: “I wish the BBC would stop calling it Islamic State.
What it is, is an appalling barbarous regime… It’s a perversion of the religion
of Islam and many Muslims listening to this programme {BBC Radio 4} will recoil
every time they hear the words Islamic State.” Others argued that giving it the
designation “state” also adds legitimacy because the self-styled caliphate is
no more than an organization that is not recognized as a sovereign state by any
country in the world.
Of course there are other designations for this terrorist group such as
ISIS and ISIL, the latter being the preferred term of President Obama. This is
explained by those trying to establish a caliphate, calling themselves, Islamic
State of Iraq and al-Shaam. Al-Shaam translates roughly as the Levant (the
areas near the East coast of the Mediterranean), also known as Greater
Syria. If you translate al-Shaam as the Levant you get ISIL, if you
translate it as Syria or just Shaam you get ISIS.
So as you can see there is no
consensus on what to call the group and as a result there is much variance in
designations. While I understand the reluctance of people who feel that the
words “Islamic” or “state” lend legitimacy to a terrorist organization, I find
adding the qualifier “so-called” to be somewhat silly. After all, this
qualifier has not been generally added to other similar organizations. I don’t
know if I ever heard Hezbollah (Party of Allah) referred to as the “so-called
Hezbollah” because it doesn’t represent Muslim values or the IRA referred to as
the “so-called Irish Republican Army” because it didn’t really qualify as an
army. One could equally argue that because a leader of the former Soviet Union
didn’t adhere to Communist principles it should be dubbed as having a
“so-called Communist” government or an opponent to the former East German
regime could have suggested that the government be labelled the “so-called
Democratic Republic.” I remember when Menachem Begin was Prime Minister of
Israel 1977-1983, he always referred to the “so-called PLO” because he couldn’t
bring himself to suggest it was a liberation movement even in its acronymic
form. However, to my recollection, few media outlets conformed to this
“so-called” modifier.
Thankfully, there is a simple
solution to this naming conundrum. In 2013, Syrian Khaled al-Haj Salih coined
the term Daesh (usually pronounced
Dash or Da-ish). It is a transliteration
of the Arabic acronym and is formed of the same words that make up ISIS in
English, “Islamic State in Iraq and Syria,” and is rendered in Arabic as al-dawla-al-islamiya fi-al-Iraq wa-ash-shaam.
But Daesh also sounds in Arabic very
similar to the word daes that means
“someone or something that crushes or tramples.” This definition is why the
terrorist organization detests the name. In an article in Freeword, February 2015 entitled “Decoding Daesh: Why is the new
name for ISIS so hard to understand?,” Arab translator Alice Guthrie says that
the term is despised because they {the terrorist group} hear it 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.” Guthrie
adds that the name Daesh “lends
itself well to satire, and for the arabophones trying to resist Daesh, humour
and satire are essential weapons in their nightmarish struggle.” In Guthrie’s article, al-Haj Salih asks “If an
organisation wants to call itself ‘the light,’ but in fact are ‘the darkness,’ would
you comply and call them ‘the light’?”
Al-Haj Salih adds that Daesh
is a fictitious name for the nonsensical fictional concept proposed by the
terrorist organization and thus serves the purpose of discrediting it.
As of December 2015, UK
government ministers started referring to the militant group as Daesh but unfortunately the BBC has not
followed suit. A BBC story in July of this year referred to the perpetrators of
the siege and murder in Bangladesh as supporters of the “so-called Islamic
State.” For me, a qualifier such as “so-called” should be reserved for
something morally reprehensible such as honour killings. Although the name Daesh is widely used in the Arab world and has gained great
currency in Europe it is not often employed in Canada or the United States. As
far as I am aware, the only major North American political figure who employs
the word is US Secretary of State John Kerry.
As language can be a powerful
weapon of war, it is time for the anglophone world to join the coalition using
the term Daesh. Let’s echo Voltaire
and add words to the arsenal when combatting terrorists.
Richler’s latest book Wordplay:Arranged and Deranged Wit was
published in May by Ronsdale Press.
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