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Shaping a Concept of Terrorist Acts

Chapter 1 is concerned with bringing some clarity to the widespread conceptual confusion around what terms like “terrorist,” “terrorist act,” and “terrorism” mean. Without being too rigid about definition, it is important to operate with some agreed definitional clarity in the area. The chapter defends the value of such a definitional enterprise and then provides what it calls a tactical definition of a terrorist act that aims to capture a central core involved in talk about terrorism, and opens discussion of terrorist acts to cogent moral assessment. The author’s definition of a terrorist act is: “A political act, ordinarily committed or inspired by an organized group, in which violence is intentionally directed at non-combatants (or ‘innocents’ in a suitable sense) or their significant property, in order to cause them serious harm.” The rest of the chapter discusses advantages of the definition and criticizes a number of objections to it.