Free The Complete Infidel's Guide to ISIS by Robert Spencer

the world, to refer to them as pertaining only to Iraq and the Levant was an implicit denial of their claim to have restored the caliphate. Plus, as we have seen, “Daesh” sounds like the Arabic words for someone who “crushes something under foot” or “sows discord.”
     
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    OSTRICH ALERT

    “Islam is about peace and brotherhood. There are 1.6 billion Muslims in this world, and the true Islamic faith has nothing to do with what ISIL represents. And so to start labeling them as Islam or as Islamic State in any respect, I think gives them far more dignity than they deserve.”
    —Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, February 22, 2015 7
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    Fabius and Kerry may have been intending to signal to ISIS leaders a calculated disrespect. But it was alsohandy that calling the Islamic State “Daesh” among English speakers obscured the “Islamic” aspect of its name even more than calling it “ISIS” or “ISIL.”
     
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    THEY MEAN WHAT THEY SAY
    In February 2015, the Islamic State showed that they meant business about being called the name they wanted; they gave a boy sixty lashes in public for referring to them as “Daesh.” 8 He was lucky not to have his tongue amputated—the prescribed penalty for his crime.
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    It is increasingly common journalistic practice to refer to the Islamic State simply as “Islamic State,” without the definite article, as if it were some Dantescan college sports team. This is not so much an attempt to demonstrate by shorthand that it is not Islamic as that it is not a state—and a group with illegitimate pretensions to both.
    As if all these different names weren’t confusing enough, Egypt’s leading Islamic authority, Dar al-Ifta, announced that it would be calling the group “al-Qaeda Separatists in Iraq and Syria”: QSIS. 9 A group of imams in Britain called on British Prime Minister David Cameron to call it “the un-Islamic State.” 10
    The Islamic State Laughs
    The Islamic State has professed contempt and amusement over all this confusion and denial. In his September 21, 2014, address calling for strikes in the U.S. and Europe, Islamic State spokesman Abu Muhammad Adnani ridiculed John Kerry (“that uncircumcised old geezer”) and Barack Obama (“the mule of the jews”, Adnani’s capitalization) for declaring that the Islamic State was not Islamic—as if the American president and secretary of state were Islamic authorities:
                The media portrayed the crusaders as good, merciful, noble, generous, honorable and passionate people who feared for Islam and the Muslims the “corruption and cruelty of the khawarij (a deviant, extremist sect) of the Islamic State” as they allege. Tothe extent that Kerry, the uncircumcised old geezer, suddenly became an Islamic jurist, issuing a verdict to the people that the Islamic State was distorting Islam, that what it was doing was against Islamic teachings, and that the Islamic State was an enemy of Islam. And to the extent that Obama, the mule of the jews [sic], suddenly became a sheikh, mufti (Islamic scholar that issues verdicts), and an Islamic preacher, warning the people and preaching in defense of Islam, claiming that the Islamic State has nothing to do with Islam. This occurred during six different addresses he made in the span of a single month, all of them about the threat of the Islamic State. 11
    The Western media has taken little notice of the Islamic State’s self-description and contempt for those who deny its Islamic character. A steady stream of articles by Muslim and non-Muslim academics and commentators maintains that, despite appearances to the contrary, ISIS has nothing to do with Islam.
    However, this avalanche of reassurances only leaves us with an inexplicable mystery: If the Islamic State so brazenly violates the Qur’an and outrages Muhammad’s example, why is it so appealing to the most devout young Muslims that over twenty thousand Muslims from all over the world