On the wing of decapitation videos and presidential calls for military action, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, ISIS has regularly headlined world news.
Despite opposition from both inside and outside the Muslim community, misconceptions are still perpetuated by media outlets, beginning with the name itself, said Asim Ali, project manager of University initiatives and adviser to the Muslim Student Association.
"ISIS was named on opposite day," Ali said. "Everything they do is actually the opposite of what Islam says. It's very un-Islamic, and it's disgusting. We, as a society, by allowing ourselves to call them the Islamic State, are giving them legitimacy that they crave that they do not deserve."
In an open letter to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, ISIS leader, from Islamic scholars around the world, shared with The Plainsman by Ali, the self-proclaimed head of the Islamic State and the entire ISIS ideology is deconstructed and defeated by religious logic.
"That letter is perfect because it says, 'This is where ISIS is wrong,' through terminology and exact education," Ali said.
Like most terrorist movements in the region, the actors were pushed to extremism by government action, said Jill Crystal, political science professor.
"The Shia-dominated government in Iraq became so exclusive, so discriminatory or, in many cases, violent towards the Sunni population that they became alienated from the government," Crystal said. "They would never moved in the direction of the Islamic State had it not been for the Shia government essentially pushing them in that direction."
The movement was able to gain traction in Syria in 2013, because of Bashar al-Assad's increasingly violent regime, which prompted widespread military opposition.
"The extremist Islamist groups were able to get more funding and were better organized than the Free Syrian Army, which doesn't really exist as a coherent group," Crystal said. "The Syrian side is largely a reflection of the Assad regime and the reaction to that."
While some applaud his hardened stance on international terrorism, others are critical of the threat of exacerbating the situation.
"Our intervention might turn them to extremism, our intervention could help their recruitment, this could backfire in a number of ways," Crystal said. "We've seen this movie before. How many times do we have to invade Iraq before we figure out that that's probably not going to work?"
Strategists need be wary of the unintended consequences of starting a new ground war in the Middle East, said military history professor Mark Sheftall.
"You can destroy a group like ISIS, but the ideas that create radical militant Islamic groups are still going to be out there," Sheftall said. "Until you make them less appealing to people or give them a reason not to gravitate towards them, you'll always have some people who find groups like al-Qaida or ISIS appealing."
Sheftall warned that eliminating either the Assad regime or ISIS too quickly would leave a vacuum of power in Syria that could lead to a similar situation.
"The best option is to empower forces who will fight against both Assad and ISIS," Sheftall said.
According to Ali, responsibility falls on Muslims to denounce extremists, but that everyone should know by now that fringe minorities in any group do not define the greater movement.
"Iraq was like a rose: It's different petals that make up one flower, and those different petals are different ethnicities and religions that come together to make this one flower. ISIS is tearing away each petal and killing the flower," Ali said.
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