WASHINGTON — Words can be weapons, too. So after nearly every new report of political violence, whether merely plotted or actually carried out, there is a vocabulary debate: Should it be labeled “terrorism”?
When early reports of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan’s shooting spree at Fort Hood, Tex., in November mentioned his personal problems and failed to apply the T-word, activists on the right cried foul: He’s a radical Muslim terrorist, they said, and only political correctness run amok could argue otherwise.
When A. Joseph Stack III flew his Piper Dakota into an Internal Revenue Service office building in Austin, Tex., in February, killing himself and an I.R.S. manager, it was the left that blew the linguistic whistle: If such a public, politically motivated act of lethal violence is not terrorism, they asked, just what is?
Last week, the arrests of nine members of the Hutaree Christian sect in Michigan on charges that they plotted to kill police officers and then bomb their funerals stirred up the question again.
Were they terrorists? Were they Christians? Were they just weirdos? Had they been Muslims, some commentators complained, there would have been not a moment’s hesitation at applying both names: Islamic terrorism.
“None dare call it terrorism,” wrote David Dayen at the liberal Firedoglake blog, noting that most of the major media outlets had not used the word “terrorism” in reporting the Hutaree arrests for plotting exactly that. “These are Christians, so they cannot be terrorists. Or something,” he added, with sarcasm.
http://newageislam.com/warefare-with-words/islam-and-the-west/d/2759
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5:29 AM
Moderate Islamist here
