I’m not going to call this decisive, but I asked a syrian mate of mine what the whole daesh thing was all about, and he said basically it’s european politicians being ****. Daesh is literally the arabic equivalent of ISIL, it’s the closest you can get to the exact arabic/english translation. He says the only thing “offensive” about it is equally true of ISIL- arabic doesn’t have a real tradition of using acronyms so abbreviating the name can be seen as basically not treating it with the respect they expect. Though he also says that only really works with non-english speaking arabs who also don’t know how we use acronyms- ie anyone who’s not noticed we say UK and USA.
Like I say, that’s one dude’s take on it, I wouldn’t want to call it decisive but when you try and find anything solid on this, there’s basically a shitload of waffle. People keep repeating things like “it sounds like some other arabic word” but nobody seems to know what it is (*) or why that’s even a thing, frinstance. The more you read the less it sounds like something we shouldn’t even have wasted as long as it took to type this post on, let alone acting like it’s important.
(* the most popular option is daes, which means something a lot like “they who crush under foot”. But what protagonist in the entire of history was ever worried to hear their enemies say something like that of them? You also notice that sometimes the same expert commentator will offer a couple of different options, which is explicitly saying “I don’t bloody know”)