What Does Daesh Mean? ISIS ‘Threatens to Cut Out the Tongues’ of Anyone Using This Word
MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA, 28 Mar 2016
Nicola Oakley and Suchandrika Chakrabarti - Mirror
Google searches for the term have leapt almost 600% in the last week, since the Brussels Attacks – but what does it mean, and why does ISIS hate the word so much?
ISIS have now threatened the UK, in the wake of the Brussels terror attacks
In the aftermath of the Brussels terror attacks this week, people have been searching for ‘Daesh‘.
At least 34 people were killed following three explosions at Zaventem Airport and Maelbeek metro station during the morning rush hour in Brussels.
ISIS has claimed responsibility for the co-ordinated attacks, in which 14 people died at Brussels’ international airport and a further 20 died in the metro station blast. At least 270 were injured.
The airport remains closed and many of the dead are still unidentified, partly because of the severity of devastation caused by the nail-packed bombs detonated in crowds.
Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam had planned to play a major role in the atrocity. He was arrested during a police raid in the Molenbeek area of Brussels days before the blasts in the city.
Abdeslam, 26, is believed to have plotted a mass attack in the style of that carried out in the French capital last year, involving multiple shootings and bombings.
What does ‘Daesh’ mean?
Daesh is an acronym for the Arabic phrase al-Dawla al-Islamiya al-Iraq al-Sham (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant).
Essentially, it’s another word for ISIS – but apparently one that ISIS militants do not favour.
Why? Because it is similar to the Arabic words ‘Daes’, ‘one who crushes something underfoot’ and ‘Dahes’, translated as ‘one who sows discord’.
In January 2015, then Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott announced that he would begin referring to the Islamic State group by this name, saying: “Daesh hates being referred to by this term, and what they don’t like has an instinctive appeal to me.”
It seems that other world leaders have now followed suit, with French president Francois Hollande and the USA’s secretary of state John Kerry both using the term.
According to NBC, ISIS has reportedly threatened to ‘cut out the tongues’ of anyone it hears using the term.
Evan Kohlmann, a national security analyst, told NBC: “It’s a derogatory term and not something people should use even if you dislike them.”
In June 2015, Downing Street asked the BBC to refer to ISIS as ‘Isil’ – but they have now relabeled the terror group for the second time.
During a speech on Syria, David Cameron repeatedly referred to the terrorists as Daesh, a word ISIS despises, but that is being used with increasing frequency.
The term has grown in popularity since the Paris terror attacks in November 2015.
ISIS claimed responsibility for the series of coordinated terror attacks that rocked the French capital, leaving at least 129 people dead.
There were two suicide attacks and a bombing near the Stade de France stadium, shootings at restaurants and a massacre inside the Bataclan theatre where US rock band Eagles of Death Metal were playing on Friday.
Now, it seems that the arrest of Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam has led to the latest ISIS incident.
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One Response to “What Does Daesh Mean? ISIS ‘Threatens to Cut Out the Tongues’ of Anyone Using This Word”
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MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA:
ISIS or Daesh amounts to the same atrocious organization that think it is heroic to kill innocent people in |Europe, in the Middle East and all over our global village, to get to their primitive Muslim Caliphate that rules the world! They do not realize that one cannot turn historic time back, and that it is a crime to kill!
Yet they will not win, as the Pen and the Computer are mightier than the Sword, and the free and rational world will join hands together and overcome this new Frankenstein, that blames other for his creation and his crimes. The day will soon come, when like Hitler, Daesh – ISIS will be swept away by its own thirst for blood and hunger for charred flesh and bones. We will succeed in overcoming this new horrendous Hitler too.
Prof. Ada Aharoni
IFLAC:International Forum for the Culture of Peace