If someone who happens to be Christian carries out terrorism, is this Christian terrorism? Or do we have a special exception for Muslims who carry out terrorism, that their terrorism is Islamic terrorism?
It depends. If the act is clearly motivated by religion and directed at perceived enemies of the religion then it is plainly religious terrorism. If the religion of the perpetrator is clearly irrelevant (e.g. a political cause, and the terrorists and perpetrators are of the same religion) then it is plainly not religious terrorism. In between are grey areas that can be argued case by case.
Yes, and I guess I could have verbalized it more, but it seems like that need (to verbalize) appears every time anything like this is mentioned. So maybe the verbalization is not so important after all.
"Terrorism" means more than just doing very bad things. Terrorism is violence against innocent people in order to further a cause.
Both Adam Lanza and the Beslan terrorists[1] killed lots of kids. But only the Beslan killers were terrorists. They hoped to further the goal of Chechen independence from Russia. Lanza was just a homicidal maniac.
