CAIRO (AP) — The Islamic State's rampage across the Middle East has left the world divided over how to refer to the extremist group, with observers adopting different acronyms based on their translation of an archaic geographical term and the extent to which they want to needle the extremists.
The Associated Press refers to it as the Islamic State group — to distinguish it from an internationally recognized state — or IS for short, usually as an adjective before the words group, organization or extremists.
In 2013 the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, renamed it the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, signaling its emergence as a transnational force while sowing the first seeds of confusion over what to call it.
In English, the group's name was translated variously as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (also ISIS), or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the term usually used by the U.S. government and various U.N. agencies.
The word is nonsensical and doesn't mean anything in Arabic but has a mocking tone and is insulting to IS because it diminishes its claim to have revived the Islamic caliphate.
