By now you’ve probably heard of the attack in Brussels, Belgium, that took place early Tuesday morning EST. The latest body count as I write this is reported as 31 dead, and the world weeps as more innocent people die. The New York Times reported a live-update story titled “What we know and don’t know” which asks the question I chose to title this article: was it terrorism?
If you don’t understand why this question is ridiculous to ask, you may find this article enlightening. The answer, of course, is yes. It was terrorism. People were killed, a nation was terrorized. So why is “terrorism” such a loaded word? Why do we have to think twice before we say something was “terrorism”?
I hate to answer a question with a question, but the answer lies in asking: what is the white, Western concept of “terrorism”? This is not something that can be accurately fleshed out in a single 500-word article, but hopefully I can try to get to the bottom of this problem.
Particularly in the United States, thanks to decades of damaging right-wing rhetoric, the word “terrorism” is inextricably tied to what Republican Presidential candidate Ted Cruz calls “Islamic extremism.” More pointedly, the American notion of terrorism dons a hijab or a turban, a niqab or a keffiyeh. Never mind trying to explain the differences between any of these headdresses. The Islamic faith, various Muslim cultures, and the cultures of nations from Morocco to Pakistan are all lumped together in the image of a Western “terrorist.” So when The New York Times asks whether the attack on Belgium was terrorism, what they are implicitly asking is whether the attack was perpetrated by those we have come to label as “terrorists.”
The connection we forge between terrorism and the Arabic-Islamic complex (a creation that is itself problematic) depends both on who does the terrorizing and who is terrorized. The tragedy in Paris a few months ago was widely publicized as the latest national tragedy, so much so that Facebook made filters for profile pictures to show support for the victims. So when a car bomb killed 36 people in Ankara, the capital of Turkey, last week, we saw similar coverage, right? Wrong. It took days for news of the attack to make its way to Facebook. There were no social media sites providing live updates, like we saw with Paris in November. There was no “stand with Ankara” filter.
Before anyone starts trying to quantify terrorism by referencing the higher death count in Paris, keep in mind that the death count for the Brussels attack is lower than the most recent attack on Turkey (there have been five in the last three months targeting the Turkish capital). Rather than trying to put a numerical worth to terrorism, let’s look at all terrorist attacks with horror, outrage, and condemnation.
In Turkey, people hesitantly called these attacks “acts of terrorism” because the victims looked a lot more like those we usually label as “terrorists.” Here in the US, we have seen a sharp rise in domestic terrorism and an equally increasing trend to not label them as “terrorists.” When Dylann Roof barged into the Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in June and killed nine Black churchgoers because they were Black, no one called him a terrorist. People called him “mentally-ill,” “messed up,” and “sick,” but his terrorism of Black Americans was not called out as terrorism. We cannot separate his whiteness, his religion, or his nationality from the hesitation to label him a terrorist.
Current events have revealed we still have a long way to go in how we understand terrorism. It has no religion, no race, no gender, no nationality, and no language. It can happen anywhere, by anyone and to anyone, for any reason. We will never be able to combat it effectively until we look past institutional prejudices and see that the real problem is violence.
