define your terms...

The term "Islamic terrorism"... it slips smoothly under our analytical radar like a stealth bomber... We don't question it. We don't examine it critically. We don't think about what it actually implies. Yet it carries with it a huge payload of dangerous assumptions...

Firstly, there is the assumption that we know what "terrorism" actually means. And yet there is a huge debate and disagreement about its meaning. In the very first post in this blog I defined what I mean by that word:

The word "terrorist" is a highly charged political term. The word as it is used here defines "terrorist" as person who uses any means to kill or maim _anyone_ to further their political, strategic, economic, or religious aims. It follows that all acts of war are acts of terrorism. Therefore to single out any one group or side in a given war as being "terrorist" is merely partisan propaganda and should be dismissed as such.

What I'm saying is that the word "terrorism" is generally used these days in the media and by our political leaders in a rabidly propagandist way. It seeks to invalidate what they are doing to us outside of the essential context of what we have done, or are doing, to them.

Now, let's bring the word "Islamic" into my definition of "terrorist" and see how it looks: We could now describe "Islamic terrorism" as an Islamic reaction to preceding acts of "Zionist terrorism" and "Christian terrorism". I think this is a much more useful way of describing it...

So, let's stop all this bitching about what "they" are doing to "us" unless we're willing to give equal media space/time to "their" bitching about what "we" are doing to "them". And then maybe we'd like start to see things from outside of the "us" and "them" crap and see "them" as "us".

Don't like to be on the receiving end of terrorism? Simple! Don't lie about what you're doing and don't dish it out.

Too Jesus-like for you? Well too bad!!! Take your propaganda and shove it!!!