We have been fighting a so-called War on Terror since the 9/11 attacks. Ever since this event, we’ve grown to equate Muslim attacks with terror. But, terrorism is not just exclusive to these Muslim attacks. Terrorism can be broken down into two categories: international and domestic terrorism. The extremist Muslim groups are committing the terrorist acts that we hear about the most.
However, when we have domestic terrorism stories, many people don’t want to call it terrorism when non-Muslims are involved. A fair definition of terrorism includes violence against civilians by non-state actors because of a political cause. But here’s the problem:
“If violence committed by Muslims is worse than violence committed by other people, then the victims of other kinds of violence also matter less.”
The media seem to label terrorism only as “a Muslim did it.”
A few days ago, we had someone open fire at the U.S. Capitol. The media were calling it a terrorist attack…until the fact that he is not a Muslim came to light. Then those same outlets were telling us it was not a terrorist attack.
Just recently, we had the case a William Celli. He threatened to kill Muslims, and all he got was 90 days in jail. He stood outside of a mosque telling Muslims that he was going to kill them.
The majority of domestic terrorism does not involve Muslims at all. Representative Keith Ellison from Minnesota said the greater majority of domestic terrorist attacks are not by Muslims at all, they’re by people like Timothy McVeigh.
In November, there was a Twitter essay by SecretGamerGirl. She argues that the “gunmen” should be called what they are: terrorists. She had this to say about the Planned Parenthood attack and Black Lives Matter attacks:
“Here’s why it’s imperative that news organizations properly label things like what happened today in Colorado and Monday in Minneapolis as acts of terrorism. It isn’t some semantic thing to prove a point about racism. It’s to get across that these people aren’t acting alone. There is a very real terrorist organization in this country who directly recruits and radicalizes young Americans, training them to hate and fear those they consider their ideological enemies: Anyone who either advocates for the rights of any marginalized group, and any member of such a group who they see as directly benefiting from such advocacy.”
Here is the link to the dozens of tweets if you would like to read it through yourself.
Featured image by The U.S. Army via flickr, available under Creative Commons 2.0 license.
