A TERRORIST GLOSSARY
Watching the news has become an educational challenge for me lately. Even though I am a word and language person, I find myself constantly confronted with a new word or phrase I have not encountered before, so I thought I would use this column to share some of my language research with you if you are having the same problem. I guess we can call it a glossary for the times in which we are living.
Let’s start with ISIS or ISIL. They are both used as an acronym to describe the terrorist organizations we are currently facing. You may also see IS or DAISH.
As best I can determine, IS stands for Islamic State. ISIS stands for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. ISIL stands for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. The Levant is a word for a region including but not necessarily limited to modern Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, the Palestinian territories, parts of Cyprus, Turkey, Iraq and the historic area of Greater Syria.
There are those who say that ISIS changed to ISIL because they wanted the world to know and recognize them as bigger than Iraq or Syria. Their goal is to take over everything from Iran to Egypt, wiping out Israel in the process.
Sharia law or Islamic law, as described in Nation magazine, is “a complex system of moral codes that governs all aspects of Muslim life... the methodology through which Muslims engage with foundational religious texts to search for the divine will (and)...governs everything from the way they eat to how they treat animals and protect the environment, to how they do business, how they marry and how their estate is distributed after death.”
I would include my own clarification that Sharia law also dictates the role of women and how they are treated. And I hasten to add that a Muslim’s “foundational religious text and search for the divine will” pertains only to Muslims. Christians and Jews have different religious texts and a different God to guide them.
Believe it or not, there are actually many people and organizations in the U.S. who are calling for sharia law to become the law of our land. Several times our judges in our courts have been called upon to make a decision, especially in a divorce, based upon sharia law where it was originally a Muslim marriage contract from a Muslim country.
Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, now deceased, said that sharia law is the antithesis of Western law; that it finds its chief source in the will of Allah as revealed to the prophet Muhammed and that “the state itself is subordinate to the Qur’an, which leaves little room for additional legislation, none for criticism or dissent…..”
A caliphate is a political-religious state comprising the Muslim community and the lands and peoples under its dominion. The IS in ISIS and ISIL both stand for Islamic state, also called a caliphate.
The era of caliphates came to a close in 1924, but Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, now claims to have set up a new caliphate called ISIS on June 29 of this year which spans Syria and Iraq. As mentioned above, they now prefer to be called ISIL because they have plans to put together a huge caliphate reaching from Egypt to Iran i.e. the entire Levant region.
Now we come to the new monster on the block, apparently not new to the president or his administration, but it made its debut just this week on the world stage.
The name is Khorasan and the Pentagon says it is more dangerous than ISIS because it has the ability to carry out attacks on Western nations. It has closer ties to Al Qaeda, which means it is mainly focused on attacking America. The Pentagon considers ISIS to be more of a regional threat although as I write this on Thursday afternoon, cable news is reporting ISIS threats on subways in Paris and New York City.
Khorasan militants have obtained materials and have been working on hard-to-detect improvised explosive devices such as hand held electronic devices and airplane carry-ons such as toiletries for their suicide missions. We bombed Khorasan earlier this week because our security people believed they were an imminent threat to the U.S.
Then there are the Caliphate Soldiers, another splinter group from ISIS. This is the group who beheaded a Frenchman in Algeria on Wednesday, its way of getting back at France for its air strikes against ISIS.
I realize this is a simplistic overview of the terms we hear tossed about every day. It is certainly not an exhaustive study and there was much more information than I could ever read or use in this column. So if you have access to different facts and definitions, don’t lambast me with caustic Facebook messages. Write a letter to the editor. We all need all the information we can get.
Before I close this column I want to mention another component in this war on terror, not as a new word, but as a possible solution. Americans are tired of war. We sure don’t want to have the draft reinstated. And we are out of money. But we still have men capable of fighting who really would like to get out there and take a shot, literally, at those who beheaded our citizens and tortured innocent women and children.
The men who came to the aid of our Ambassador Stephens in Benghazi were contract soldiers and some gave their lives that night and considered it an honor to do so.
Our allies have soldiers willing and able to take on the terrorists, too. And there is enough money in these countries to help pay for a professional army, an army who would not be limited by borders and politics, but who could engage the terrorists wherever they might try to run. It’s been done before, with success. Maybe it’s time to consider the concept again.
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