Malaysian man receives package from ISIS! Nothing happens!

ISIS, or the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, is the new word for religious extremism much like Al-Qaeda was in in the early 2000’s. If you aren’t too familiar with ISIS, you might want to check out our full ISIS article. And y’know, share it. Just because.

But the quick background is that ISIS is a Islamic extremist group that’s currently making waves in the news because they got so extreme that even al-Qaeda disowned them. Also, they are really really good at self promotion; with professionally made videos, a huge Twitter presence, selfies, and many many cat pictures (the cats belong to the fighters are called Mewjahideen). At the same time though, they have been known for beheadings and mass genocide.

So can you imagine the surprise of a CILISOS reader when he received a package from ISIS?

Our reader Lobak (Yes, that’s his real name) put this up on Facebook and gave us permission to use it.

But it’s not ISIS the militant group, it’s ISIS the local logistics company. It stands for I Store I Send. So cute.

And sooooooooo potong stim if you were expecting juicier news. #sorrynotsorry #ihatecilisos

But this isn’t just a one-off occurrence though…

This is a horrible time to be named Isis

(To prevent confusion, the militant group will be called “ISIS” while everything without an AK-47 will be referred to as “Isis”)

The original Isis was an Egyptian goddess worshipped as the ideal mother and wife while also being the patron of nature and magic. With these traits, it wouldn’t be too much surprise to find that name still in use today. But since ISIS became the al-Qaeda of the 2010’s many companies called Isis – from app developers to energy suppliers and chocolatiers -have since rebranded after either being mistaken for the militant group or have their page being buried under a ton of the other ISIS-related results. Even names aren’t spared, with a petition in the United States by people named Isis and an (awesome) metal band named ISIS had to add the words “the band” to their Facebook page when people started flaming them thinking they were ISIS.

Even when we were writing the ISIS article, a search for “isis malaysia” returned the following result:

This is actually the Institute for Strategic and International Studies, a research organization. Guess what their website URL is? Yep. http://www.isis.org.my/. However, this ISIS doesn’t look like they’re changing their name anytime soon since no one’s making fun of them yet, even on their Facebook page – unlike another organization……

Sisters in Islam (SIS)‘s acronym is only one letter away, but probably because they attract a lot more controversy/attention from the public, they’ve been getting some pretty “creative” comments pointing this out:

So what’s in a name…?

As quoted by Shakespere Sheksfere Shakesphere that guy who wrote Romeo and Juliet, how important is a name? Pretty darn important apparently.

Remember that petition by people named Isis we mentioned earlier? It’s because being constantly associated with war and general negativity can affect you after awhile.

“Whenever I was at a public place or a restaurant, there would be TV monitors with tickers at the bottom: ‘ISIS warns,’ ‘ISIS kills,’ ‘ISIS threat,’ ... Every word after my name is incredibly negative.” – Isis Martinez, as quoted in The Atlantic

Things are made even worse when people start calling you out for something that really wasn’t your fault to begin with:

The kicker here is that even ISIS don’t call themselves that anymore. It’s now Islamic State (IS). Here’s an article about how their name has changed and how different countries/organizations use different names to refer to them.

So what can we learn from this?

Use a name generator for your future children. In the interest of good reporting, this writer test it out first by giving himself a new name:

….Still better than Isis.