THE most hilarious variant so far, for me, has been:

  Islamic State in Iraq & Al-sham

Wow. Really?

That one, to me, was even MORE ridiculous than ISIL which was stupid to begin with. Who the fuck calls anything "The Levant" anymore, Jesus Christ himself? What century is this?

This is where you start to understand 2 things.

  1. There are people trying to erase Syria and invalidate 
     the concept of Syria's statehood, and erode the public
     perception of national borders as they exist, so that
     amidst the propaganda campaign, we forget about 
     the inconvenient countries that get in the way of
     campaigns for regional repartitioning along sectarian
     boundaries.

  2. There are political motives to avoid using "ISIS" 
     because it "sounds cooler" like a cartoon super 
     villain, and seems to "send the wrong message" to 
     viewers.

So, anything to help people forget that Syria was a country, and anything to prevent ISIS from using the cooler sounding name.

That's the subliminal message I'm noticing within all the spin doctoring.