For some ISU students, ISIS isn’t just an acronym.

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, the Islamist militant group that seized a chunk of land stretching from northern Syria to central Iraq commonly referred to as ISIS, has become a household name. Some students at Iowa State are concerned with political rhetoric on the Middle-Eastern terrorist group.

For the past couple of months, ISIS has made news headlines, and their actions, which include the beheadings of foreign journalists, beheadings of Christians and recently, a video of Kurdish Peshmerga fighters paraded down Iraqi streets in cages, though the video’s authenticity has not been confirmed, have prompted the Obama Administration to take action against the group.

The rhetoric surrounding the U.S. conflict against ISIS has been calculated and carefully worded. President Obama has refused to call the conflict a war on radical Islam.

“They are not religious leaders, they’re terrorists,” Obama said at the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday, per NBCnews.com. Obama went on to explain how the U.S. is not “at war with Islam, we are at war with people who have perverted Islam.”

The president has been criticized for his responses concerning ISIS. In response, Republican Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has criticized Obama for not referring to ISIS as Islamic terrorists, according to foxnews.com.

“The terror of radical Islam, the assassination of journalists, the beheading and burning alive of captives” are the problems concerning ISIS, Jindal said, who used the word “Islam” when describing the threat of ISIS.

At a Chapel Hill shooting tribute event on Friday, about 40 students, many of Islamic faith, gathered south of the Campanile. When these students were asked about Obama’s words on ISIS and the U.S. policy concerning the group, several students had responses.

“What I believe is that it’s not a war on Islam,” said Zaynab Diallo, member of the Humanitarian Awareness Committee and the International Student Council.

Diallo also voiced concerns about innocent people being harmed and killed in the conflict in the Middle East.

Jessica Sparr, senior in linguistics-Arabic at Iowa State, also commented on the language used concerning ISIS.

“I think people have a tendency to say it is a war against Islam,” Sparr said.

“Islam is very political,” said Adli Shah, president of the International Student Council.

Shah said he was concerned that too many people confuse extremist Muslims with non-extremist Muslims.

He also said he thinks the U.S. needs to clarify itself and have more “transparency” when interacting with other countries.

“We need to differentiate between terrorism and Islam,” said Sultan Alsayegh, president of the Muslim Student Association. Alsayegh said he believes the mainstream media is not always accurate in its portrayals of world events, especially in its representation of religious, radical terrorism in relation to Islam.

Students pointed out extremism and radicalism as important words used in rhetoric concerning ISIS and groups like it. What is extremism?

Miriam-Webster online dictionary defines extremism as the “belief in and support for ideas that are very far from what most people consider correct or reasonable.”

The term “extremism,” when applied to ISIS, suggests that the group holds views that do not agree with non-extremist, or moderate, Muslims’ views of Islam.

On the Miriam-Webster online dictionary, “moderate” is defined as “avoiding extremes of behavior or expression, observing reasonable limits.”