Dar al-Iftaa praises the French move of dropping the acronym ISIS or ISIL when referring to the blood-thirsty terrorist group in Iraq and Syria. The French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said: “This is a terrorist group and not a state. I do not recommend using the term Islamic State because it blurs the lines between Islam, Muslims and Islamists. The Arabs call it ‘Daesh’ and I will be calling them the ‘Daesh cutthroats’.” The French Foreign Minister asked the media to do the same in order to draw a clear line between the teachings of Islam and the horrific actions of this terrorist group.

Dar al- Iftaa has launched an international campaign three weeks ago asking the foreign media to drop using the acronym ISIS as their actions are not only anti Islam but against humanity in general. Also Dar al- Iftaa’s initiative was well received by British Muslim scholars and organizations who formed a coalition asking the British media and the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, to drop using the term “Islamic State” when referring to such terrorist group as their actions is a slur to both Islam and Muslims.

The Azerbijani New Times, an analytical news site “Newtimes.az” appealed to the Azerbaijani mass media for consolidation of efforts in confronting the media resonance of negative stereotypes caused by the association of terrorism with Islam.

Dar al-Iftaa considered all these promising initiatives in disassociating Islam from these heinous acts of terrorism as an important step in fighting the extremist ideologies. Our real challenge is not only related to the name of this terrorist group as this is only the tip of the iceberg beneath which lies a brutal mentality, cruel hearts and rigid ideologies which thrive on luring weak-minded, half-educated and ill- hearted followers.

Therefore these praise-worthy initiatives are timely to declare to the whole world that such terrorist group cannot be part of any religion as no religion embraces barbaric acts, hails bloodshed, supports terrorism or honors killing and thus they cannot be associated to Islam or any religion for that matter.