Why does Obama and state dept. refer to ISIS as "ISIL"?

[DarrinS]

Just curious.

[Venti Quattro]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levant

[HI-FI]

ISIS is the J.V. team, ISIL are Varsity types that get all the pussy.

[boutons_deux]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_Levant

a few weeks ago ISIS, or somebody, changed its name, Levant implying more territory than Syria

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levant

[DarrinS]

ISIS is the J.V. team, ISIL are Varsity types that get all the pussy.

:lmao

[Winehole23]

CNS emphasizes Sunni outrage over the association of Islam qua religion with ISIS, AL QAEDA and the like, then puts this funny little hat on it:


Beheadings were a feature in the early days of Islam. According to historical texts Mohammed ordered that a Jewish leader, Kinana al-Rabi, be made to suffer to reveal the whereabouts of hidden treasure. He was tortured to the point of death, and then beheaded. Mohammed subsequently took Kinana’s widow, Safiyya, as his eleventh wife.


A verse in the Qur’an (8:12 (http://www.alquranverse.com/8/12/Shakir)) declares: “I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them.”

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/patrick-goodenough/isil-isis-now-qsis-top-sunni-cleric-says-stop-calling-terrorists

[Winehole23]

in b4 crocodile tears about mission creep.

this won't be solved easily. ISIS is a regional threat, besides being an existential one for Iraq and for (proto-)Kurdistan.

the ISIL usage underlines their regional reach. diction is part of the sell. this war won't be short.

[Winehole23]

eleven years later, some regional badass is now a self-styled caliphate. of course, there would be.

[Winehole23]

the high level rapprochement with Iran might be timely.

[SnakeBoy]

Yes we'll need strange bedfellows to deal with ISIL. Whatever it takes to kill them imo. As long as we don't pretend that we're going to kill them under medical supervision...that would be bad.

[Winehole23]

Defense officials said Monday evening that the Pentagon was sending in manned and unmanned reconnaissance flights over Syria, using a combination of aircraft, including drones and possibly U2 spy planes. Mr. Obama approved the flights over the weekend, a senior administration official said.http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/26/world/middleeast/obama-syria-ISIS.html

[TheSanityAnnex]

US special forces will team the UK special forces. Boots will be on the ground. Hopefully they don't give them bullshit ROE's and actually let them do what they are good at, which is killing those motherfuckers.

[SnakeBoy]

ISIL or ISIS? Why the world can’t decide
http://qz.com/222726/isil-or-isis-why-the-world-cant-decide/

When a bunch of extremists seem about to take control of one of the Middle East’s largest countries, you’d think we’d have better things to do then argue about what they’re called. But the world’s media seem stubbornly divided about what name to give the jihadist movement currently overwhelming Iraq.



To some news outlets—including the big news agencies Reuters, the Associated Press, and Agence France-Presse, as well as al-Jazeera—it’s the “Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant,” or ISIL. To others—among them the New York Times—it’s the “Islamic State in Iraq and Syria” (or in some cases “Greater Syria”), or ISIS. Quite a few places write “…the Levant,” but then bizarrely abbreviate it to ISIS (we’re looking at you, Financial Times and Guardian).



1

Nor is the confusion restricted to English-language media. In French the reigning phrase appears to be l’Etat Islamique en Irak et au Levant (EIIL). But in Spain, El Pais has chosen El Estado Islámico en Irak y el Levante (EIIL), while its rival newspaper El Mundo has gone with Estado Islámico de Irak y Siria, and uses the English acronym ISIS. In Germany, Deutsche Welle uses ISIS in both its English and German versions, but writes out “…the Levant” on its English site and “…und Syrien” on its German one; meanwhile, Der Spiegel, Die Zeit and the Frankfurter Allgemeine have gone with ISIS while Die Welt plumps for ISIL. The BBC Russian service, like much of the Russian media, uses the Russian equivalent of ISIL—whereas the BBC in English spells out “Levant” but then uses ISIS.




It’s all a sham

The group’s name in Arabic is al dawla al islamiyye f’il iraq w’al sham. The last word, sham, is the problematic one. It is used, in the phrase bilad al sham, to refer variously to: the contemporary Levant, a somewhat amorphous region sometimes understood to include Iraq, and sometimes not; to the historical region called al sham in classical Arabic but known to the ancient Greeks and other civilizations as “Syria” or a variant thereof, which is roughly contiguous with the Levant; and to a Syrian nationalist dream of a “Greater Syria,” a region of similar extent that includes Iraq. Sham is also a contemporary nickname for Damascus, the Syrian capital; but modern-day Syria is called suriya.



No wonder people are confused. So how to resolve the issue?



Some outlets (the New Yorker among them) have skirted it by calling the group the “Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham,” which conveniently abbreviates to ISIS. That might be the most honest approach. But it’s also the least informative. DAIISH (or DIISH or DAISH), an acronym of the Arabic name, might be better (media do sometimes use foreign-language acronyms like KGB), but it seems unlikely to become popular.



At Quartz we’ve chosen to render sham as “Levant” over “Syria,” on the grounds that while scholars of Middle Eastern history might recognize “Syria” to have a broader meaning, most of our readers will take it to mean modern-day Syria, i.e., suriya, not sham. And then, if you’re using “Levant,” you might as well as abbreviate it logically—so, ISIL.



There’s another, more practical reason. If you search Google for ISIS, you’ll also find a mobile-payments system; a pharmaceutical company; a zoological database used for species conservation; a respected history-of-science journal; a couple of university student information systems; a nuclear non-proliferation think-tank; the shadowy spy agency in a bawdy animated comedy series; and, needless to say, the Egyptian goddess of nature and magic. And that’s just on the first page of results. But there is only one ISIL.



ISIL would seem to be a better choice I suppose.

[Th'Pusher]

Now they want to be called IS. What if we confuse them with information systems? IS want's to set up a caliphate in the ME. Maybe Ottoman Empire 2.0 would be more appropriate?

[SnakeBoy]

Too bad the gays won't give permission to officially start calling them faggots just to piss them off.

[hater]

Now they want to be called IS. What if we confuse them with information systems? IS want's to set up a caliphate in the ME. Maybe Ottoman Empire 2.0 would be more appropriate?

well given that AlQaeda means the DataBase. It's appropiate that they employ another IT department slang tbh

the DBAs vs the Javascripts. Fight for the Middle East....