A terrorist does not as a rule fight or engage military forces. A short answer to a long question,but I dont know how to expand the description ?
There is no single, all-encompassing definition of terrorism.
In general, terrorism is an act of violence that targets a civilian population for the purpose of inciting fear and anger in the population and convincing the government to enact specific political policies.
It's not a complete definition. For instance there used to be a group that had declared a sort of religious war and went around bombing churches and temples belonging to the other religions in the area. Were these terrorist attacks? The UN thought so.
Another example is Al Qaeda's suicide bombing attack against the USS Cole. This was not a civilian target, but it was considered a terrorist attack because Al Qaeda was already considered a terrorist group by the US Government.
Then what about eco-terrorism and cyber-terrorism?
So yeah, the definition is a bit vague, but in general, it involves carrying violence against civilians with a political or religious goal in mind. Therefore, the Boston Bombing was an act of Terrorism but Sandy Hook, was not, at least, not unless some additional evidence comes to light.
Also, if you look at the US Government's list of terrorist or suspected terrorist groups, you'll see that there are a surprisingly large number made up of Americans living in America - many of whom consider themselves "Christian" despite their actions. As for Al Qaeda, due to losing Bin Laden and many other top members, they aren't the #1 threat anymore. Unfortunately there's no shortage of religious zealots willing to kill civilians in the name of their "god".
It's violence against innocent-targets.
Terrorism is about spreading fear amongst the population, to get your way. It's why they hit civilians, rather than Military, or Government targets.
some things are defined while others are described , other are explained by significance while other are felt and no description is enough things like beauty can not be defined but only felt
terrorism is different for different persons for some freedom movement and for other radicalism and extremism
I could not find a single answer to the exact definition of terrorism. I think that it's any act of violence used by someone or a group done for their own beliefs(not necessarily religion). Whether or not they were actually trying to have some political or monetary gain or not.
I found one statistic on terrorism on US soil but i wasn't satisfied. The pie graph was cut into groups like "Extreme left wing groups" and "others". How am I supposed to know who they mean by that? An other reason why I don't like that statistic is they probably include every type of "terrorism". Not all acts of terrorism defined by some people are violent to include types like cyber-terrorism, eco-terrorism, and state terrorism. All though these types should still be taken very seriously, they normally don't physically harm people.
I originally began looking this up because many people are ignorant to the facts of terrorism. I don't blame them though since the only time media mentions terrorism it involves extreme Muslims/Al-Qaeda. This puts a stigma on the Islam religion that I feel is unfair. What about the terrorist attacks of these drug cartels who I'm sure kill just as many people. The KKK? Now I know they're not at large now but just think of what they use to do. This is why I want clarification on this! I'm open to the fact that I could be wrong and that Al-Qaeda actually is the most deadly terrorist group or that its actually some group I never heard of. Or that it's actually children!! Only kidding but again that's why I want facts. Preferably some pie and bar graphs involving the whole world and a separate one for the US with groups involving religion, race, and other groups that could open peoples eyes.
Is anybody on here capable on doing a study like that? Or at the very least find one that i couldn't?
Here are the links to the one statistic and one for types of terrorism:
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/05/muslims-only-carried-out-2-5-percent-of-terrorist-attacks-on-u-s-soil-between-1970-and-2012.html
http://terrorism.about.com/od/whatisterroris1/tp/DefiningTerrorism.htm
thanks to anybody who can help or give answers
