Terrorism

by HICKLING, P.L. | Category: N/a | Mar 2009

Terrorism - what is it?

This is not so easy to answer as it seems, because some people want to frame the definition so that it excludes activities that they think legitimate, such as fights against colonialism and racism. A study for the U.S. army found over 100 definitions. However for our purposes we can define it as 'violent activity which seeks to put the people in general in a state of fear, so as to influence the policy of the government'. This definition does not therefore cover, for example, action against a government's armed forces. The term first appeared in English c. 1795, but we are mainly thinking about recent events.

What sorts of action?

Possibly the things that come most readily to mind depend on where you live, but the action that had the greatest repercussions world-wide was the attack on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre in New York on September 11th 2001. It was one of those events when you know where you were when it happened - I was sitting in the Conference of Overseers of the Churches of God when we were told about it. We were struck with the enormity of it - round 3000 people died - and it turned us to prayer. The action of terrorism in itself was not new, of course; the UK had suffered years of it in Northern Ireland, but a new feature of this was the suicide terrorist. The airlines had always assumed that someone who wanted to put a bomb on a plane would not put his own life in danger, but the hijackers intended to kill themselves, everyone on board the planes and thousands of others to publicise their cause. Everyone who travels by plane now knows how much time is spent checking passengers. The methods of terror are being used more and more widely; recent examples are in Mumbai, Iraq and against the Sri Lankan cricket team in Pakistan.

Why?

As our definition says, because the terrorists want to get their own way. For what reasons? In the case of Islamic terrorists, who pose the greatest threat to Britain and America, they are partly religious and partly political, a mixture inflammatory down the centuries. They quote the Koran as justifying attacks against the 'infidel', and in some cases regard anything short of full support for sharia law as attack against 'the Islamic nation'. We cannot examine all the different causes of terrorist acts, but they have this in common: that those who do them believe that they are justified by an overriding cause.

Are terrorist acts ever justified?

Dispute over this question is what has made agreement of the definition so difficult. At international conferences some have sought to justify terrorism to bring down dictatorships or corrupt regimes or colonial powers, but we seek to answer it from a Christian point of view. Here the answer is emphatically, No! The Master Himself gave the lead on this: 'Bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you',(1) and the apostle Paul wrote, 'Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God'.(2) Paul was not writing about benevolent and favourable authorities, but in the time of the sadistic and malicious emperor Nero. We might agree that some of the ends are desirable, but good ends never justify bad means, and random killing and maiming is always evil.

What should we do?

Most of us have no power of our own against those who threaten us, but there are two things that we can do: first, trust in God. He has saved us, and we belong to Him. Do we not believe that He will do what is best for us? Second, if there's anything to be afraid of, pray. Scripture says, 'Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God'.(3) The object of terrorism is to make us afraid, and to change our judgements because of that fear, but faith should drive out fear, so that terror will have the opposite effect to what it intends.

References: (1) Luke 6:28 (2) Rom. 13:1 (3) Phil. 4:6

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HICKLING, P.L. | Mar 2009
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