Not terror (or at least not primarily terror), but jihad

I see that Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch had pretty much the same thought that I did (see previous entry) about how our leaders and media automatically call the murders in Frankfurt a “terrorist” attack, thus putting it in a distinct category from a koranically mandated Islamic attack on non-Muslims. He writes:

It is not clear even what they mean by that [calling it a terrorist attack] at this point. What actually would constitute a terrorist attack? Would the murderer have to announce that he was about to carry out a terrorist attack before he started shooting? Would he have to be carrying an al-Qaeda membership card?

In reality, he cried, “Allahu akbar” and possibly “Jihad, jihad.” It was a jihad attack. [Italics added.] But of course we are not defending ourselves against the global jihad, so that is a point of no significance.

Spencer’s point, which was also more or less my point, is that as long as we reflexively characterize all jihad attacks as “terrorist” attacks, we fail to grasp the actual nature and motivation of the attacks, and so we fail to take the proper measures to defend ourselves from them.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 02, 2011 08:22 PM | Send