FOR governments, media outlets and academics the world over, a question continues to confound: what exactly do you call the militant outfit that currently controls considerable chunks of Iraq and Syria? What should it be out of IS/ISIS/ISIL/Daesh?
We may ask what’s in a name? But there are issues of political correctness, legitimacy and accuracy at stake: many in the international community — especially in the Muslim world — do not want to grant what is clearly a lethal terrorist outfit legitimacy by referring to what it calls itself in Arabic: ad-Dawlat al-Islamia, literally translated as ‘the Islamic state’.
Strategic Perspectives Through Research and Dialogue
