Terrorism: An Equal Opportunity Disease

Americans need to resist letting popular assumptions about terrorists cloud our judgment as to the true meaning of the word. There are consequences to incorrectly defining terrorism, and although it may seem a matter of semantics, there is a lot at stake.

Two years ago, in New York City, Michael Enright flagged down and stepped into a cab. He began what appeared to be a casual conversation with the driver, Ahmed Sharif, asking the cabbie questions about his life and faith—nothing out of the ordinary. However, upon hearing that Sharif was Muslim, Enright, an American whose country purports to value the principles of religious freedom and tolerance, brutally assaulted Sharif. Is it not the case that Enright, in a reversal of the usual stereotype, perpetrated an act of terrorism against the innocent, law-abiding Muslim? Sadly, in our country there are many such examples of brutality committed each year in the name of American freedom and against the threat of foreign subversion. Do our assumptions about terrorists and terrorism defy accurate definitions of terrorism? Do racism and discrimination remain problematically bound up with these assumptions and definitions? The above incident suggests that the answer to all of these questions is a resounding “yes.”

It is long overdue, but it’s time for America to redirect its anger and apply the definition of terrorist and terrorism fairly—and to avoid resorting to a double standard, in which it is invariably a male, turbaned Muslim who is the villain. The Oxford English Dictionary defines terrorism as “the unofficial or unauthorized use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims.” But Americans in practice use the term selectively; we are quick to jump on the “terrorist” train if the perpetrator of an act of violence is of Muslim faith, yet we seldom if ever use the term to describe American or Western acts of violence against others that conform to the above definition.

Many Americans and Europeans act as if their histories remain unblemished by acts of terrorism. Yet we need only remember the murder of millions of Jewish people during the Holocaust, or the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing of the Federal Building to see that our assumptions about terrorism contradict the reality and that terrorism transcends any single religion, nationality, ethnicity, or ideology. There appears to be an equal opportunity disease.

For that matter, is the erratic murder of innocent moviegoers at the Dark Knight Rises opening in Colorado an act of terrorism? If it isn’t, then what is it? Do motives matter in determining a terrorist act’s status? Why did James Holmes’s seemingly random movie murder spree stem from his “insanity” and not his culture or religion? What about Adam Lanza, and his ruthless murder of Sandy Hook elementary school students and teachers; why are his religion and culture not to blame for his act of terror?  Conversely, why do we not attempt—at least in part—to attribute the horrendous acts of 9/11 to the insanity of the hijackers, not solely to their religion?

The answers to these questions about the nature of terrorism are not easily determined. What is clear is that we use the term far more than we did before 9/11, and we need to do a better job of defining it and of employing it uniformly—disregarding the cultural, religious, or ethnic identities of the perpetrators and victims. Otherwise, we can expect more appalling events like the Enright taxi-cab assault, and more instances in which Americans violate each other’s freedoms in a much more fundamental way than terrorism ever could. Clear action in tackling the problem of terrorism demands clear thinking.

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