You can’t take the Islam out of Islamic State

At last, British politicians have been galvanised into action by the appalling events last weekend in the Tunisian resort of Sousse, in which 38 people were murdered by an Islamist terrorist. Yes, yes, about time, you might be muttering to yourself — but credit where it’s due, please. They may be a little late to the party but at least they have arrived.

A convocation of 120 of our MPs, including Boris Johnson, have demanded strong and forthright action. They have written to the BBC demanding that it stop using the term ‘Islamic State’ to describe the organisation responsible for the attack, because it might upset that seemingly diminishing, if still large, proportion of Muslims who don’t wander around shooting people, or chopping their heads off, or blowing themselves up.

This is an excellent step forward and one would imagine that the BBC will be only too happy to comply. The MPs have suggested that an acceptable substitute for ‘Islamic State’ would be ‘Daesh’, which is an acronym for the Arabic translation of ‘Islamic State of Iraq and Syria’.