The self-styled Islamic State (IS) has claimed responsibility for the murderous Easter Sunday bomb blasts in Colombo, Sri Lanka, which took a toll of over 300 lives, including those of 13 Indian nationals.
While leaders from across the globe and the international media have condemned the barbaric attacks, the censure has been compromised by attributing them to the so-called Islamic State, thereby linking Islam with terror in the public mind and fostering a climate of Islamophobia, the backlash to which helps the terror group recruit more radicalised militants to its unholy cause.
That acts of terror have no religion cannot be repeated often enough. But when we use the term Islamic State to describe the terrorist organisation, which originated from the al-Queda following the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, we are inadvertently helping it by associating it with a particular religion.
To call the Islamic State by the name which it has given itself grants it the status of a recognised entity, as in the case of, say, the so-called Quebec Liberation Front which through terrorist attacks, including the bombing of the Montreal Stock Exchange in 1969, sought secession from Canada, before being suppressed by law enforcement agencies in the early 1970s.
It was said of the erstwhile Holy Roman Empire that it was neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire. Similarly, the `Islamic State’ is emphatically not Islamic, nor is it a recognised state, but a ragtag underground criminal band of terrorists.
So let’s find another name for the ‘Islamic State’ which better describes what it really is.
Terror Inc could be a good alternative, with the Inc standing for `Incarnate’.