Islamic State: what Wikipedia removed

The Islamic State is the jihadist group that seized territory in Iraq and Syria and is designated a terrorist organization by the United Nations and other governments. Through the October 2023 snapshot the opening said IS “is a transnational militant Islamist terrorist group” and that it was “Designated a terrorist organisation by the United Nations and others.” Today’s opening calls it a “transnational Salafi jihadist militant organisation and unrecognised quasi-state” and drops the sentence naming the UN designation; islamist survives 32 times elsewhere in the article. A reader today does not learn, from the opening, that the United Nations and other governments have formally designated the Islamic State a terrorist organization.

The word “islamist” appeared 2 times in this article’s opening at its peak, in 6 October 2023. Today the opening carries none; the body carries 32. Checked against the full current article on 2026-08-01.

Where this comes from

We saved this article’s opening paragraph at 5 moments between 2010 and 2025. Everything below is Wikipedia’s own text, quoted from those saved copies. The interactive version, with every snapshot side by side and each removal marked in place, is at ilroot.com/case/islamic-state.

The tracked words, snapshot by snapshot

word	2010	2015	2020	6 October 2023	2025
islamist	0	1	1	2	0
terror	0	1	8	10	4
militant	0	6	10	15	5
jihad	0	5	6	12	11
massacre	0	0	1	1	3
antisemitism	0	0	1	3	3

Counts are of the opening paragraph only, the part most readers, search engines and AI training sets ever quote.

What was taken out

• The short description tag naming the group a Salafi jihadist militant Islamist group, reworded to drop Islamist.
• The sentence calling the group a transnational militant Islamist terrorist group, reworded to drop terrorist and Islamist.
• A sentence on the group’s name change, reworded rather than removed.
• The sentence stating the group was designated a terrorist organisation by the United Nations and others, dropped from the opening.
• A quoted statement from Erdoğan referring to the group’s leader and the terrorist organization DAESH, dropped from the article.

How it opened then, and now

2010 (revision 368674352):

The Islamic State of Iraq or Dawlat al-‘Iraq al-Islamiyya ( Arabic دولة العراق الإسلامية ), is an umbrella organization of a number of Iraqi insurgent groups established on October 15, 2006 “to protect the Iraqi people from United States attacks and defend Islam, by the Hilf al-Mutayyibin ” This group was formed by the insurgent groups just before the proclamation of the State. The group is composed of and supported by a variety of insurgency groups, including its predecessor, the Mujahideen Shura Council , Al-Qaeda in Iraq , Jeish al-Fatiheen , Jund al-Sahaba , Katbiyan Ansar Al-Tawhid wal Sunnah , Jeish al-Taiifa al-Mansoura , etc, and other clans whose population is of Sunni faith. It aim…

2025 (revision 1298335130):

Salafi jihadist terrorist group This article is about the modern Salafi jihadist organisation. For the concept of a state based on Islamic law, see Islamic state . For other uses, see Islamic state (disambiguation) . Several terms redirect here. For other uses, see ISIL (disambiguation) , Isis (disambiguation) , and Daesh (disambiguation) . The Islamic State ( IS ), also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant ( ISIL ), the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria ( ISIS ) and Daesh , is a transnational Salafi jihadist militant organisation and unrecognised quasi-state . ISIL occupied significant territory in Iraq and Syria in 2013, but lost most of it in 2017 and 2019. In 2014, the group p…

Related

• The drift report: what changed across all 61,944 watched articles
• The case file for this article, with every snapshot and every marked removal
• Who made the cuts: removals grouped by the account that made them
• The live article on Wikipedia

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