Dot Wordsworth on language: Why do we call it ‘Islamic State’?

I’m puzzled by the dropping of the one part of the name of the Islamic State that seems certain. That it is Islamic, many dispute. That it is a state is just as unclear. But calling it the does not bestow honour upon it, any more than referring to the Third Reich meant agreement with its behaviour. But there’s all the difference between the Queen and Queen. The Islamic State is grammatically like the Irish Free State, the Orange Free State or the Bluegrass State (Kentucky). And yet the BBC commonly speaks of ‘Islamic State’ without the definite article, like Sinn Fein or Sheffield Wednesday.

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Rupert Darwall

Labour has walked into a net-zero trap of its own making

In June I wrote here about the jihadist group’s good fortune in landing the English acronym Isis — easy to pronounce and remember. It stood for Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (‘al-Sham’ being a name for Greater Syria).