Military Review English Edition March-April 2016 | Page 27

DAESH

Maj. Theresa Ford, U.S. Army, is a legal advisor with U.S. Special Operations Command, MacDill Air Force Base, Florida.
She holds a BA from Thomas Edison State College, an MA in international relations from St. Mary’s University, and a JD
from the University of Maine. She studied Arabic in Egypt and conflict resolution in Israel as part of her graduate studies.
She deployed during Operation Iraqi Freedom and served as a member of the Afghanistan-Pakistan Hands Program in
Operation Enduring Freedom.

Notes
Epigraph. Thomas Hegghammer, “The Soft Power of Militant
Jihad,” New York Times online, 18 December 2015, accessed 19
January 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/20/opinion/
sunday/militant-jihads-softer-side.html?_r=0. Anashid is a plural
form of nasheed, or “Islamic devotional music.” See also Souad
Mekhennet, “German Officials Alarmed by Ex-Rapper’s New
Message: Jihad,” New York Times online, 31 August 2011, accessed
19 January 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/01/world/europe/01jihadi.html.
1. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S. Marine Gen.
Joseph F. Dunford Jr., testimony before the House Armed Services
Committee, 1 December 2015, C-SPAN video recording, “Military
Operations against ISIS,” accessed 19 January 2016, http://www.c-span.org/video/?401241-1/ashton-carter-joseph-dunford-testimony-military-operations-isis. Dunford identifies Daesh’s sources
of power as “existence of the caliphate … their narrative … [and]
manpower.”
2. Ashton Carter, “Statement on the U.S. Military Strategy in the Middle East and the Counter-ISIL Campaign before
the Senate Armed Services Committee,” Secretary of Defense
testimony, 27 October 2015, accessed 19 January 2016, http://
www.defense.gov/News/Speeches/Speech-View/Article/626037/
statement-on-the-us-military-strategy-in-the-middle-east-andthe-counter-isil-c; Barack Obama, National Security Strategy
(Washington, DC, February 2015), 2, accessed 19 January 2016,
https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/2015_national_security_strategy.pdf.
3. Associated Press, “Is it IS, ISIS, ISIL or maybe Daesh?”, Ynet
News online, 12 September 2014, accessed 19 January 2016,
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4570385,00.html.
4. J. Milton Cowan, ed., Hans Wehr Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic (Urbana: Spoken Language Services, Inc.,1994), 325.
Daesh is based on the Arabic acronym for Islamic State in Iraq and
Syria, al-dowlat al-Islamiya al Iraq wa ash-shams.
5. “British House of Commons Debate on Combating ISIS in Syria,” C-SPAN, 2 December 2015, accessed 20
January 2016, http://www.c-span.org/video/?401458-1/
british-house-commons-authorizes-airstrikes-syria-397223.
6. The prophet Mohammad, quoted and translated in William
Muir, The Life of Mohammad (Edinburgh: John Grant, 1923), 485,
accessed 28 January 2016, https://ia802606.us.archive.org/4/items/
lifeofmohammadfr00muir/lifeofmohammadfr00muir.pdf.
7. Hans Wehr Dictionary, 85. The Arabic root letters b, k, and r
relate to the subject of virginity, with bakara meaning virginity and

MILITARY REVIEW  March-April 2016

bikr meaning virgin. The word bakr, however, means young camel;
the words for virgin and young camel are spelled the same in
Arabic. The only difference between the two is the unwritten short
vowels, or diacritics, that were added long after Mohammad’s day.
The name young camel was likely a nickname for Aishah, who was
a virgin.
8. Ali Hashem, “The Many Names of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,”
Al-Monitor online, 23 March 2015, accessed 20 January 2016,
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/03/isis-baghdadi-islamic-state-caliph-many-names-al-qaeda.html#. See also Vali
Nasr, The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the
Future (New York: W.W. Norton, 2007), 197.
9. Abu Omar, quoted in Hashem, “The Many Names of Abu
Bakr al-Baghdadi.” See also Mark Sykes, The Caliphs’ Last Heritage:
A Short History of the Turkish Empire (London: Macmillan Publishers
Ltd., 1915), 221, accessed 3 January 2016, http://babel.hathitrust.
org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b57529;view=1up;seq=250.
10. William McCants, “The Believer: How an Introvert with a
Passion for Religion and Soccer Became Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi
Leader of the Islamic State,” The Brookings Essay online, 1 September 2015, accessed 20 January 2016, http://www.brookings.edu/
research/essays/2015/thebeliever.
11. From a hadith reported by Abu Dawud from Muawiyah,
cited in Dabiq 9, Sha’Ban 1436 [May 2015], 53, accessed 21 January 2016, http://media.clarionproject.org/files/islamic-state/isis-isilislamic-state-magazine-issue%2B9-they-plot-and-allah-plots-sexslavery.pdf. Dabiq magazine uses the Islamic calendar.
12. Charlie Winter, The Virtual ‘Caliphate’: Understanding
Islamic State’s Propaganda Strategy (London: Quilliam Foundation, July 2015), 30, accessed 20 January 2016, http://www.
quilliamfoundation.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/publications/
free/the-virtual-caliphate-understanding-islamic-states-propaganda-strategy.pdf. “The emphasis on eschatology lends
urgency to the IS narrative and incentivizes other jihadists—
individuals or groups—to join the organization.