It’s not often that Alex Salmond and David Cameron agree. But this week they were united in their view that we need to reconsider how we refer to those responsible for the cowardly terrorist attacks like those we’ve seen in Tunisia, France and Kuwait in the last week.

Yesterday the SNP’s Foreign Affairs Spokesperson, Alex Salmond stated: “Any description of terrorists which confers on them the image that they are representing either a religion or a state must surely be wrong and an own goal of massive proportions.”

Speaking on the Today programme on Monday, The Prime Minister told listeners that he wished that the BBC would stop referring to the terrorist organisation thought to be responsible as “Islamic State”, “because it is not an Islamic state”.

“What it is” he said, “is an appalling barbarous regime that is a perversion of the religion of Islam and many Muslims listening to this programme will recoil every time they hear the words.”

I could not agree more.

That’s why I’ve added my name to a letter which will be delivered today to the Prime Minister by 125 Members of Parliament from all the major parties in the House of Commons. The letter asks him to make it official Government policy to refer to the so called Islamic State as “Daesh”. The Governments of Turkey, France and Australia have already adopted Daesh to describe this group, and now the UK Government should follow suit.

A similar letter will be sent to the BBC’s Director General, asking the broadcaster to show leadership in the media by adopting the same approach in its reporting.

The campaign was organised by Rehman Chisti, a backbench Conservative MP, and has already received support from a diverse group of MPs from the SNP’s Angus Robertson and Alex Salmond, Zac Goldsmith and Boris Johnston from the Conservatives, to Labour’s Keith Vaz and the Green MP Caroline Lucas.

We all believe that we should remove any legitimacy that these titles give this despicable group.

It’s clear to us all that the use of terminology such as Islamic State, ISIL and ISIS gives a veneer of authority to what is a terrorist organisation. This group is not a recognised state, is categorically not Islamic, and has no support from our Muslim community, who all believe that actions like last week’s senseless shootings in Tunisia are despicable.

Instead, our view is that we should adopt the name “Daesh” – a far more fitting epithet from an Arabic acronym with negative connotations.

After the Prime Minister’s Statement to the House of Commons on Monday, I was encouraged to hear MPs from across the Chamber refer to Daesh when asking questions on the awful tragedy in Tunisia.

The important underlying issue here is that we must do all we can to undermine any legitimacy this group may have, and disassociate it completely from the Muslim community. We must refuse to give these disparate terrorists the credibility that they crave, and which is essential in their work to infiltrate our communities and families with their poisonous extremism.

Renaming Daesh will not solve all of these issues overnight, but it will be a step in the right direction. Let’s not give this group a respectability that they don’t deserve.

This action would complement a range of other measures we need to press on with to combat extremism which already have support across politics. We must prioritise the use of international aid to fund education projects and work to combat poverty, and continue to fund projects at home which tackle radicalisation by supporting families and communities to help our younger people to make positive choices about their future. In particular we need to work with women to empower them in tackling extremism at its root.

None of these measures will work in isolation, but by undermining whatever credibility Daesh may have and giving young people alternatives to violence we can hopefully make progress by addressing the underlying causes of terrorism. This approach needs to work hand-in-hand with action to bring these criminals to justice.

Only a concerted effort, across a range of interconnected issues will combat the rise in terrorism in the Middle East, Africa and Europe. We must work together across borders and political divides if we are to succeed.

Let’s remove any links to legitimacy that these organisations may have as a starting point for this work. Those connected with the terrorist atrocities carried out in the last week should be condemned and not conferred with any credence.

Breaking the link between violence and religion would not only help to dissuade those misguided recruits who travel to Syria for what they believe is a religious war, and begin to protect the reputation of the millions of peaceful Muslims around the world who are abhorred by the violence carried out supposedly, in their name.

More importantly, it will bring us another small step closer to making our communities safer, and hopefully go a little way in preventing the senseless and heartbreaking events we saw across the world last week.