John Kerry, Pentagon generals & Australia's Prime Minister all calling ISIS by name the group reportedly hates
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Secretary of State John Kerry, top generals at the Pentagon and even the Prime Minister of Australia have all begun calling the radical jihadists group Isis by a new name and it is a name the group’s members reportedly hate.
‘Daesh’ – pronounced dash – is an acronym for a phrase in Arabic that means the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Apparently it sounds similar to an Arabic word to ‘trample down or crush,’ according to the Washington Post.
The Post reported that the terror group has threatened to ‘cut out the tongues of anyone who uses the phrase publicly.’
Kerry has been using the term since early December.
Now Australia’s Prime Minister has begun using the acrynym when speaking publicly as well.
“Daesh hates being referred to by this term, and what they don’t like has an instinctive ¬appeal to me,” Tony Abbott told the Herald Sun newspaper.
Pentagon generals have also begun referring to the group as Daesh.
From The Guardian:
Lieutenant General James Terry almost exclusively used Daesh in reference to the militants at a press conference Thursday, although the Pentagon’s policy to primarily use “Isil” – an acronym for “the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant” – has not changed.
Terry, who leads US operations against Isis in Iraq, said partners in the region had asked him not to use the terms Islamic State, Isil or Isis (the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria).