The Star now says 'Daesh' instead of 'the Islamic State' or ISIS "These people are a huge multinational gang of killers and rapists — they have no legitimacy as a state and this name change helps emphasize that," said the Toronto Star's editor-in-chief Michael Cooke.
Everyone knows Al Qaeda, but most people have forgotten it means "the base." Boko Haram, which kills and kidnaps schoolchildren, means, unsurprisingly, "Western education is forbidden."
But the term that makes politicians, pundits and journalists slap their foreheads is Islamic State — or the awkward acronyms ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) or ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.)
That's because the criminal gang that has murdered, raped and pillaged its way across the Middle East, while sending sycophants to slaughter civilians abroad, is neither Islamic nor an internationally recognized state.