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Terrorism is using fear and also violent actions to intimidate communities, governments, or oppose an ideology. Terrorism is a brutal act, which is meant to initiate an alarm. It may be accomplished for a political, religious, or even ideological objective by using prohibited violence. The acts of violence occur when it is peacetime or even in the battle against non-combatants. Inequality is as a result of the recent disparities, which can be resolved by the United Nations. UN can play its primary role and create a new fair, logic, and a fruitful international community’s order. There are several examples of terrorism, which are kidnappings, hijackings, shooting of mass of people, bombing cars and buildings, suicide bombings, and taking people as hostages. Terrorists use force or even violence against people or also property, thereby violating the United States’ criminal laws with the aim of intimidation, coercing, or obtaining ransoms (Braithwaite, 2013). Terrorists threaten the public to make them feel afraid and also attempt to convince people that their country’s administration is not powerful hence cannot prevent terrorism.
The word terror was derived from Tersere, a Latin verb. The name later became Terrere, meaning to frighten. The term terrible was first used in French in the year 1160. Francois-Noel Babeuf, a French philosopher, was the first person to use the word “terroriste,” which meant a terrorist. The philosopher strongly denounced the Jacobin regime of Maximilien Robespierre. Francois believed the system was a dictatorship.
The word terrorism was, therefore, first used in the action’s description of the Jacobin Club at the time of the Reign of Terror, which was in the French Revolution (Cohan, 2002). Jacobin conducted a Reign of Terror, which involved mass executions that were carried out by the execution device known as Guillotine. Robespierre, the revolutionary leader, tried to justify the prohibited mass killing of 40,000 individuals by stating that terror was carrying out justice.
Modern terrorism’s tactics emerged shortly later in Russia in the 1870s. The people that sought to remove czar from his position opted to make his government weak by using extreme and also community actions of brutality (Laqueur, 2016). The violence was intended to destabilize the administration, divide citizens, and even to provoke the government leaders to overreact due to fear. The tactics disseminated rapidly in other different places outside of Russia and were embraced by revolutionaries, dissidents, and even anarchists. All these individuals were those that the British empires and also the Ottoman had oppressed. Terrorism, therefore, initially became a worldwide phenomenon as an excellent method to fight or get rid of imperialism through destabilizing colonial administrations, splitting the population’s loyalty, and even provoking colonial leaders so that they would overreact. That was how the idea of terrorism came into being.
Terrorism is regularly used with that connotation of the morally wrong thing. Governments and even non-state groups make use of the term to denounce the contradicting groups (Griset, Mahan, & Griset, 2003). There have been several accusations regarding the use of terrorism by various political organizations to accomplish their goal. It is with the inclusion of religious groups, ruling governments, nationalist teams, etc. Legislation proclaiming terrorism as an offense has been embraced in a majority of the states. However, when nation-states perpetrate terrorism, the actions are not seen or recognized as terrorism by the states carrying them out. Such a scenario, therefore, makes legality a significant grey area problem.
People also have that strong belief that acts of terrorism are mainly carried out by jihadists groups (Gabriel, 2002). The conviction has brought about the development of Islamophobia, and individuals have a generalized perspective that all Muslims are terrorists. However, the truth is that terrorism does not have any specific religion as most of the attacks are accomplished by non-Muslims who, at times, have the Muslim knowledge hence the wrong impression.
References
Braithwaite, A. (2013). The logic of public fear in terrorism and counter-terrorism. Journal of
police and criminal psychology, 28(2), 95-101.
Cohan, J. A. (2002). Formulation of a State’s Response to Terrorism and State-Sponsored
Terrorism. Pace Int’l L. Rev., 14, 77.
Gabriel, M. A. (2002). Islam and terrorism. Charisma Media.
Griset, P. L., Mahan, S., & Griset, P. L. (2003). Terrorism in perspective (p. 278). California:
Sage Publications.
Laqueur, W. (2016). A history of terrorism: Expanded edition. Transaction Publishers.