“This is for Syria, my Muslim brothers.” These were the words of Muhaydin Mire, the ‘terrorist’ who a few weeks ago wielded his Stanley knife at Leytonstone Tube Station, injuring but thankfully not killing three innocent Londoners. This particular remark is what led police to categorise this violence as a ‘terrorist incident’, a description which, as far as I’m concerned, is not particularly helpful or accurate.
Now at first you might think I’m being slightly obtuse — of course it was terrorism, you’d say. There was a young man, of Somalian or Sudanese origin, speaking with an Arabic accent according to eyewitnesses, who set out to kill innocent people. What’s more, he was acting on behalf of what he himself described as his “Muslim Brothers” in Syria — better known as ISIS to you and me. His actions even seem to fit the dictionary definition of terrorism as ‘the unofficial or unauthorised use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims’.
So why am I being so stubborn? Why can’t I just accept that the Leytonstone attack was terrorism? You probably think I should just get off my lefty-liberal Corbynista terrorist-sympathising high horse and accept like everyone else that this is just a new form of terrorism that we must all recognise and fight. There is a reason why I won’t.
On Tuesday 10th November, a month before the Leytonstone incident, a Japanese national and octogenarian Yoshiyuki Shinohara chose to push an unsuspecting woman into an oncoming Tube Train at Piccadilly Circus. Luckily his victim survived the ordeal although Shinohara was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder. But nobody labelled the incident as terrorism. There was no blanket media coverage where politicians, police chiefs and commentators asserted the need for ever greater vigilance and ever-more resources in the fight against terror, stoking already high levels of fear amongst the population. It was just another crime on the tube, like the other 2,255 violent crimes which occurred on the network last year. So what was it that made Leytonstone so different from Piccadilly Circus or for that matter any of these other violent crimes?
Very little, as far as I can see. Of course, Mire did shout “this is for Syria” and his aims probably were political. But who is to say Shinohara was not harbouring some political motive and what reason is there to assume Mire was any more mentally stable? What’s more, imagine if Shinohara had shouted “this is for Syria”. I very much doubt whether anybody would have labelled him a terrorist. People would have just said that he was a crazy old man whereas Mire on the other hand was a young Somali Muslim — far more likely to be a terrorist, surely? It appears then that when we use the word terrorism to describe events we do so not just on the basis of the presence or absence of political motivation, but on our prejudices: racial and religious. It is for this reason I am uncomfortable applying the word terrorism to describe events at Leytonstone. Worse still, the way in which we define terrorism also affects how we respond to it.
No better example of this is Donald Trump’s call “for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” in the wake of the California shootings. This typifies the often dangerous reactions which can be elicited by declaring a form of violence to be terrorism, demonstrating the need for caution before doing so. To their credit, US security services did this, initially refusing to call the shootings terrorism. Only once the identities and backgrounds of the perpetrators – married couple Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik – had been discovered was the label applied, due to the knowledge that they had been radicalised in Saudi Arabian training camps. Now, I don’t deny for one minute that the California Shootings were terrorism. Neither do I dispute that it was correct to express this fact in the media. My concern is simply the ubiquity of ethnic and religious prejudice when defining and reacting to tragedies such as this.
Take Charleston, South Carolina, where on the 17th June this year white supremacist Dylann Roof entered the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church and murdered nine worshippers in cold blood. Very few people classified his actions as terrorism, despite the fact Roof was politically motivated in his violence, admitting his intention was to start a race war. He targeted people due to their identity, killing them because of his beliefs, like ISIS. The only reason I can see why people didn’t call him a terrorist was because of who he was, because he was white, because he was a Christian. None of these factors seem legitimate to me.
It seems then that we determine whether or not something is terrorism based on the race and religion of those who carry out the act. If this was of limited consequence then I might be more ambivalent but this simply isn’t the case. The fight against Islamic fundamentalists seems to permit us to step over an invisible line, to say things we would not normally think acceptable, to justify things we would not normally consider permissible: mass surveillance laws, drone strikes in civilian areas, Guantanamo Bay.
Now it could be argued that all this is perfectly fine, as long as it is only the terrorists on the receiving end. However, this is almost never the case, with those often simply sharing the same race or religion as them being caught in the crossfire. And thanks to our selective use of the word ‘terrorism’ it is mostly Muslims and those from the Middle East who become the victims of our response. After all, it’s not as though the Klu Klux Klan suddenly felt the full military force of Western Governments after Charleston with all whites and Christians suddenly becoming acceptable collateral damage. Nor did we see Theresa May calling for a ban on all Japanese nationals after events at Piccadilly Circus involving Mr Shinohara.Â
So where do we draw the line? We start by using the word terrorism properly, ridding it of our racial and religious prejudices. We should stop using it to describe everyday crimes on the Tube and instead use it to describe events which fit the true meaning of the word, such as the murder of African-American churchgoers, motivated by the colour of the victims’ skin. Then maybe if we stopped using the word so excessively, and instead started to use it more selectively, our response to many tragedies could become a little less unjust.
