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Terrorism impacts us all. It has sadly become the norm for us to almost constantly live our lives in fear of a potential horrific surprise, while also trying to understand the motives of those that threaten the lives of others. Not only do terrorist acts cause us to question their occurrence, but they cause us to question our own ability to withstand such traumatic and devastating events. Consequently, we are left without knowing how and how often to protect ourselves; or if we should continue to shield our eyes from an imminent monster until it presents itself in our own lives.
For us in the United States, the concept of being threatened and or endangered by terrorism is relatively new, considering that only 14 years ago we experienced firsthand the invasion of our ideologies and beliefs that would cost thousands of lives. Even so, it seems that we have considered this to be a one-time-only case under the impression that it would be nearly impossible for something as utterly disastrous to ever transpire again. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case as what just recently happened in Paris is indicative of the fact that we have before us a new form of social and religious hatred that is centered on foreign ideologies and faiths that we in Western society do not understand. Since it is the interpretation of fundamentalist-extremists that action should be the name of God, according to their definition, human life is of no value to them and any one human being can pay the price. In our society, acting against other human beings is an act of terrorism.
For us to believe that such acts of hatred are distant from us is to refuse to see the reality of the situation. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) purports that 69 U.S. residents have been identified as having links to Islamic extremists in 2013. This statistic has doubled in the past 2 years. In fact, according to the FBI Director, James Comey, more than 200 Americans have traveled or tried to travel to join Syrian or Iraqi extremist groups in July of 2015.
Terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda consider war against Western civilization to be a holy war of Islam (jihad) and their objective is the imposition of Sharia Law. Sharia Law is derived from Islamic precepts and contains a series of moral and religious laws. It includes topics like crime, politics and economics as well as personal issues such as sexuality, hygiene, diet, social class and spiritual prayers. It is considered an infallible law of God, but its interpretation differs between schools and sects. Those with radical interpretations consider it their duty to impose the law on others, and they also believe that Western civilization is the enemy. This is how the terrorist can sacrifice their own life for a religious cause, and also take the lives of others without hesitation because they do not see other people’s lives from a humanistic perspective — “the other's life” is the enemy that must be eradicated.
In this country, terrorism is defined as premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents. (U.S. Code Title 22, Ch. 38, Para. 2656f(d). Politically, the explanation of terrorist acts in the hands of jihadist, consists in the expression of extremist Muslims against the West because our way of thinking and our values do not coincide with Sharia Law. It is possible that their perceived superiority of their religion is due to the fact that they understand it in their own cultural parameters, which is explanatory of the justification of killing others in the name of their beliefs.
Clearly, the logic of those extremists are not even close to being the same as ours, and for most of us, terrorist acts are considered insane. There is not a defined personality profile for all terrorists. However, there seems to be a pattern―they are usually either teenagers or young adults. We can then surmise that because they are young, they want to belong and they join certain groups in an effort to find their identity. Through military training, they convert all aspects of their lives to the objective of the group to which they belong, similar to what happens when boys join gangs.
Thus, what can ultimately be taken away is that terrorists are more than just terrorists. They are individuals who genuinely believe that their ethnicity and/or beliefs are superior to the rest of the worlds’ and that their internal strife is caused by repressive countries. They are people who suffer from a psychiatric pathology, or people without identities who are seeking to belong.
