A prospective new state, to be known as Al-Dawla Al-Islamiyya fi Al-Iraq wa Al-Asham (“The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant”), was announced on June 29, 2014. Exactly one year later, Mr. David Cameron, prime minister of the United Kingdom, chastised the BBC for referring to the new entity as a state. He told the BBC to refer to them as an organization or a terrorist regime, but not a state. The BBC did not entirely agree.

Was Mr. Cameron right? The answer is threefold: There is ISIL the organization; ISIL the state; and then groups that sympathize with ISIL, or even pledge allegiance to ISIL, but who are outside the Iraq/Syria territorial limits. ISIL itself distinguishes between the organization in the homeland and the organization outside the current state territory.