What is Terrorism Revision

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Taylor White
Professor Shirk
POL 357
3 May 2018

What is Terrorism Revision

At the beginning of the semester, I argued that since the 1960s the definition of terrorism was socially constructed by experts to help them study a particular phenomenon and that in turn, the working definition of terrorism is a political term rather than a natural one. Subsequently, I asserted that the continued politicization of the term by supposed experts would yield a moral dilemma in which each violent act would be labeled as evil, thereby, “produc(ing) a discourse that they are unable to control… in which terrorism is conceived as a problem of evil and pathology.” My original definition of terrorism was based entirely off of the thoughts of Stampnitzky, yet through our discussions throughout the semester, I have altered my definition.
While I still agree with Stampnitzky in that it is concerning the way in which so-called experts have crafted the working definition of terrorism, I believe that this definition is slightly too broad to define terrorism adequately. Although I stand by my argument in my first paper that the definition of terrorism is socially constructed, after analyzing a variety of cases throughout the semester, my current definition of terrorism is a hybrid if Stampniztsky’s and Rapoport’s thoughts. Similar to Rapoport, I believe that terrorism is politically oriented acts of violence by non-state actors against non-combatants. Although terrorism is a tactic used to achieve this political goal, I would add to Rapoport’s definition in that terrorism can have a political goal with motives tied to a specific ideology such as religion or nationalism. Both Stampniztky’s idea of social construction and Rapoport’s definition of terrorism, combined with my belief that terrorism may be tied to an ideology, form my final definition of terrorism.
The PLO was formed in 1964 with the political goal of establishing a Palestinian state. Members of the group believed that through the formation of Israel in 1948 that the Palestinian people had been expelled from land that belonged to them, not the Jewish people. Rather than being tied to a particular religion, the members of the group had nationalist sentiments. The group was made up of disillusioned Palestinians who wanted to return to their homeland and believed that to do so, they had to attack Israeli civilians. The tactical use of violence by the group would work to achieve the political goal of establishing a Palestinian state for the people to return to, which was fueled by the nationalist desire to liberate the Palestinian people from the situation they believed themselves to be in. In attacking Israeli civilians including the country’s Olympic athletes, the group believed they would be able to expel the Jewish people from the land including the city of Jerusalem.
Al Qaeda is a group of non-state Muslims who organized in 1988 to fight the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Although the Afghan War ended fairly quickly after the formation of the group, its members sought to oust other foreign presence in the Middle East. The group had a political goal, that is, to establish a fundamentalist Islamic regime while subsequently eliminating those forces the group perceived would hinder the achievement of their goal. While the group had the political goal of establishing a particular regime, the roots of the group’s motives were based on religious ideas. Also, the group believed that in achieving its goal, it would protect Islam in the region, which the group believed was being destroyed by the actions of foreign states including Russia and the US. To establish the Islamic regime, leaders of the group including Osama bin Laden, believed that a holy war must be fought, not only to protect Islam in the region but to ensure that it would be the guiding force behind the future state. In doing so, the group's members committed numerous attacks, including attacking the US on 9/11. Although Al Qaeda stated that they were attacking state actors through targeting the World Trade Center, the non-combatant American citizens that were killed in the attack were believed by the group to be necessary victims to the group’s overall goal.
Through reading and discussing different cases of terrorism throughout the semester including the PLO and AL Qaeda, I have changed my original definition of terrorism. My current definition of terrorism draws upon the work of Stampniztky and Rapoport while including my personal belief that terrorism can be tied to a particular ideology. Although this is my definition of terrorism based on the limited number of cases we were able to study this semester, I believe that if we were to have studied other cases, that my definition would be slightly different.


Stampnitzky, Lisa. Disciplining terror: how experts invented "terrorism". Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014.

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