Quote:
Originally Posted by Raptor
The media did jump to conclusions about who was behind this attack but it just isn't true that only Muslim groups are labeled as terrorists (ETA, various Irish organisations etc).
To me, a terrorist is a person who is part of an organisation, not someone acting completely solo. I don't think that's an official definition but dictionary.com at least mentions groups even if it isn't a requirement:
I'm not sure if I will continue to only use "terrorist" for groups after this. My use of the word is probably to do with the difference between thinking that the organisers of an act like this are still out there versus thinking that it was all down to one person who was subsequently caught.
The statements blaming Al Qaeda for inspiring this are completely stupid.
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Pre 9/11, yeah a lot of people recognized that terrorist groups come in many colours, and we seemed okay to say someone was a terrorist even if they were acting outside an organization (Timothy McVeigh was labelled a terrorist, no he didn't act alone but it was outside an organization, and we don't know yet if this guy worked absolutely alone or not. Oh, and there was also the Unabomber's terrorist status), but we pretty much equate terrorist with Muslim violence (I've seen insurgents fighting our military labeled terrorists even though what they're doing doesn't fit the definition) even though if I recall correctly, a small minority of terrorist organizations are Muslim. There is a good solid definition for terrorism, but in the last decade its become extremely muddled up and we use it in ways that says a lot about us.
The original article has a ton of links in it, and I didn't want to hot link every one, but they do refer to articles to back up their points.