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Groups such as al-Qaida now have multiple spinoffs or rivals, such as the Islamic State (ISIL), and it’s easier for politicians to lump them together than to focus on their differences.

“But at the same time, (terms) certainly can be used with a loaded agenda or to frame a discussion,” Littlewood notes. “In reality, we need to pay fairly careful attention to who is using the terms and in what context.”

In one example, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has linked disparate groups, explaining his country’s military tactics last summer by saying his foes all presented the same threat. “Hamas is ISIS, ISIS is Hamas” he said, adding that they are “branches of the same poisonous tree.” (Hamas is a powerful Palestinian political party with a militant wing that Canada and other countries deem a terrorist group.)

“Terms can shape a debate depending on whether people accept some of the premises that are built into the words used,” says Carleton University Prof. Randal Marlin, a propaganda expert.

The use of terms has shifted since the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks on New York and Washington. In the first few days after, both then-U.S. president George W. Bush and then-Canadian prime minister Jean Chrétien described the perpetrators as “terrorists” – but didn’t touch on their motivations.

Later that month, Bush declared a “war on terror” against “Islamic extremism that has been rejected by Muslim scholars and the vast majority of Muslim clerics – a fringe movement that perverts the peaceful teachings of Islam.”