http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/13/jared-lee-loughner-loner-muslim-terroristsIf the shooting had been carried out by a Muslim, we'd be deep in Islamist conspiracies now. So why the double standards?Mehdi Hasan The Guardian, Thursday 13 January 2011
Did you know that Jared Lee Loughner, the suspect in the Arizona shooting spree that left six dead and 14 wounded, including the US congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, had speculated beforehand on YouTube whether he would be labelled a "terrorist"? He needn't have worried. Loughner has yet to be described in such terms by the authorities or the media. "Loner"? Yes. "Extremist"? Yes. Terrorist? No.
Perhaps, you might say, it's because we have difficulty agreeing on a definition of terrorism, despite the Terrorist Tourette syndrome that so many of our politicians and commentators have suffered from in recent years. "Most of the time, if something looks like a terrorist and makes a noise like a terrorist, it's a terrorist," remarked the then British ambassador to the UN, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, in the wake of the September 11 attacks. If only it were that simple. Terrorism has long been a contested and loaded term. A 2003 study for the US army quoted a source that counted 109 definitions of terrorism that covered 22 different definitional elements.
Nonetheless, most would agree that the use of violence against civilians for political purposes is a form of terrorism. And section 802 of the USA Patriot Act, passed by a Republican Congress the month after the attacks on the World Trade Centre, explicitly expanded the term "terrorism" to include domestic actions that are "dangerous to human life" and are intended to "intimidate or coerce a civilian population", "influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion", or "affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping".
Isn't the firing of a bullet into the head of an elected politician in a public place covered by any, or all, of those three criteria? Or does the suspect have to have an Arabic name to be classed as a terrorist these days? Imagine, for a moment, that the shooter outside the Tucson Safeway last Saturday had been a Muslim. Does anyone doubt that accusations of homegrown terrorism, links to al-Qaida and vast Islamist conspiracies wouldn't have come thick and fast?