When Japanese Anarchists plotted throwing bombs at the carriage of the Japanese god-emperor, they were trying to unseat a fascist theocracy.  When the suicide bombing kamikaze slammed their planes into battleships, they were trying to maintain a fascist theocracy.  When Al Qaeda members indiscriminately murder, they are trying to install a fascist theocracy.  These examples establish a definition for ‘terrorism’ and disprove the cliché that ‘one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter’.

In order, CIA’s response to the Boston attacks is obtuse even by its standards: ‘eleven and a half years after 9/11, we still do not know what causes someone to turn to terror’.  Allow me to help: people turn to terror, to violent intimidation, when they think they can advance a political cause by doing so (setting ‘terrorism’ apart from such atrocities as the Sandy Hook school shooting, a distinction that some commenters affect not to understand).  This CIA’s current stance is certainly a change from the days when it helped the Apartheid police find and imprison Nelson Mandela for twenty seven years for, you guessed it, ‘terrorism’.

That brings the second point.  Political violence is not always morally illegitimate.  Neither the American Civil Rights’ movement nor the struggle against apartheid would have been as peaceful had the option to be less peaceful not been kept in plain sight.  To this one could add the Russian partisans who fought the advance of the Wehrmacht, and the Spanish Iron Column against the falangists.

This is what is wrong with that cliché; a terrorist may be a freedom fighter, but is not necessarily so.  A terrorist can easily despise human liberty; indeed, Zawahiri, now chief of Al Qaeda, says explicitly that a ruler’s infidelity justifies rebellion, but a ruler’s tyranny does not. 

Former President Bush committed therefore a grave offense against reason and the English language when he proclaimed ‘a war on terror’.  Take the bombing of Boston Marathon, the riots in Sweden, the murder of a British soldier in Woolwich, and the similar attack on a French soldier in Paris, and put them next to a few others.  When the Taliban shot Malala Yousef for learning to read – was this ‘terrorism’?  When Malik Hasan shot thirteen men and women at Fort Hood – was this ‘terrorism’?  When the Jews of Malmo, the Christians of the Central African Republic, the Hindus of Bengal are assaulted – are all these ‘terrorism’?

The answer is yes, of course  - but also more.  What defines all these acts is not their means but their end.  These are not just terrorism, but Jihad, the assertion of Islamic supremacy through violence and terror.  In the same way, the German army’s policy of Schreklichkeit asserted German supremacy, in the same way that the Imperial Japanese army’s Rape of Nanking asserted Japanese supremacy, in the same way the Ku Klux Klan’s lynchings asserted white Christian supremacy through terror in the Old South of the United States.

Explore this a little further and learn the power of words.  The lynchings of the Ku Klux Klan were never going to stop as long as the term n**ger was in common use amongst southern Christians, the Jihad atrocities will continue as long as the word kafir is in common use among the Ummah.  And that word is in very common use – Mehdi Hasan, the editor of the New Statesman, when he is not full of weepy self-pity, can be heard on youtube yelling about how kafirs such as myself are cattle-like, of congenitally low intelligence. 

What can be done?  Here’s a thought: Imperial Japan massacred in Manchuria long before Pearl Harbour, Imperial Germany butchered the Ovambo people of Namibia before it was loosed on the continent, and the Woolwich murderer had been practicising in Kenya before he picked up a machette here.  There are many places where such outrages are committed daily and commited worse.  The attacks we see, though terrible, are merely the far shores of an ocean of violence and cruelty.  It defies reason and justice that we offer no help to those bearing the brunt.  These close-to-home acts should not be met with weakness and should not be met with chauvenism; they should instead then inspire us to a spirit of internationalism and solidarity, to hate the perpetrators and stand shoulder to shoulder with our fellow kafirs, whenever they face persecution, wherever they may be found.

This piece is one of three in Varsity Comment's coverage of the controversial issue of terrorism in Britain. The others are available here and here.