When did you first learn the word “terrorist”? Where did you learn it from?

For me, I was in the fourth grade. I was in a classroom in Iowa on September 11th, 2001. We were watching an airplane hit a tower and I thought that we were watching a Hollywood movie until much later. In fourth grade, I was just one year fresh out of ESL. I learned a new English word that day. I tried it out on my tongue to sound it out.

I asked my parents what the word meant but they didn’t really have an answer. I guess they were learning English too. Still today, I don't have an answer.

I learned the word terrorism that day and learned to apply it to the feeling I got when I watched people fall out of skyscrapers but I never really learned its meaning. In the years that unfolded after 2001, I learned the consequences of this word.

The FBI has two definitions of terrorism: “Violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups who are inspired by, or associated with, designated foreign terrorist organizations or nations (state-sponsored)” and “Violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups to further ideological goals stemming from domestic influences, such as those of a political, religious, social, racial, or environmental nature.”

The United Nations offers a more convoluted stance:

“While declarations, resolutions and universal “sectoral” treaties have articulated some distinct conditions and core elements, no standardized definition of terrorism exists. In the absence of an internationally agreed definition of acts of terrorism, the High Commissioner for Human Rights calls upon States to be guided by the key elements of acts of terrorism provided in Security Council resolution 1566 (2004) and the model definition developed by the Special Rapporteur. As a minimum,Terrorism involves the intimidation or coercion of populations or governments through the threat or perpetration of violence, causing death, serious injury or the taking of hostages.”

Here’s what I’ve been able to piece together about terrorism—it doesn’t actually refer to violence but to the threat of a certain type of violence. When a nation-state declares war, that isn’t considered to be terrorism even though the threat to life is high in most cases of formal warfare. Terrorism, then, isn’t something that respected states and the governments that run them get accused of. It doesn’t have to do with violence specifically but implies other things.

During the BLM protests, many people on the right accused protestors of terrorism even though the protests were largely nonviolent. There were some windows being broken but most people weren’t even doing that. Most people were just trying to get their voices heard and march with banners.

The word terrorism is unique among words in that there is no synonym. No other word can replace the word terrorism from how it is currently used in the media because no other word is able to do what this word does.

In her book Deport, Deprive, Extradite, Nisha Kapoor writes:

“One of the signature traits of the War on Terror has been the creation of a suspect population that is globally dispersed. The effect of this has been to create, connect and condense a plethora of otherwise distinct political struggles across empire and at home. The War on Terror has also sanctioned the use of counterinsurgency policing, a mainstay of colonial governmentality, to be intensified through its day-to-day employment in the domestic spaces of the West. Militarization and securitization have been expanded and enhanced.”

She records and witnesses several instances where the charge of terrorism is used to suspend and withhold human rights from those who are suspected. Kapoor also notes that the charge of terrorism is an expanding label, that terrorism is suspected of critics of US policy to Muslim people simply traveling through airports. In the case of Wadea Al-Fayoume, accusations of terrorism can even extend to six year old children for doing nothing but running up to their landlord for a hug.

I was nine years old in 2001 when I learned the word “terrorist” for the first time. Wadea Al-Fayoume was six years old. Maybe he hadn’t learned the word yet.

If we’re talking about violence, there are other words that express it. “Militarized” and “armed” both do the job but neither of these words carry the same charge as “terror.” “Resistance” and “radical” have more of an ideological bent and ideology means that you can either agree or disagree. Biden has said that everyone should condemn terrorism. Of course—Biden has also called terrorism “sheer evil.” Who would support evil? The word terrorism is unlike words like resistance or war because no one identifies themselves to be a terrorist the same way no one identifies themselves to be evil. Terrorism is an accusation—not an identity with positive value but a purely negative charge.

“War” implies violence but also statehood. Not everyone has the power to declare war. If you have the power to declare war and you enact violence, then you are just enacting war even if your actions create an atmosphere of terror. In fact, terror seems to be something to wage war against. Terror is a justification for war.

Terrorism is an unique word not only because it suspends the human right to due process, differentiating it from other words, but because the word carries with it a spiritual dimension. The word terrorist has much in common with that older word: “sinner.”

Take a look at the words that surround instances of terrorism being used—Biden has used the word “evil” and “sheer evil” synonymously with terrorism at least twice in the last week. He also describes terrorism as “barbaric.” According to Merriam-Webster, the top synonym for “terror” is the word “demon.”

“Terrorism” is a spiritual accusation. To accuse someone of terrorism is to say that their actions do not respond to social or political events but stem from some inner inherent evil. The word “barbaric” alienates those accused. It implies that they are not contemporary people facing contemporary concerns but that their motivations are somehow more archaic, more ahistorical than the rest of us. “Evil” is a moral and spiritual judgment. The word “terrorism” updates the concept of “sin” and militarizes it.

I wonder—I truly wonder if the concept of terrorism is necessary, if it helps clarify our morality or if it limits our comprehension.

Every time Biden has used the word “terrorism” recently, I can’t help but think that he must assume Americans to be very simpleminded. Does he think that we can’t understand things outside a stark rhetoric of good and evil? I see him use this word and I can’t help but get the same feeling that I get when I see those political commercials advertising all of the ways his policies have brought Americans discounts on household goods as though economic injustice is the result of overpriced products instead of wage inequality. This man thinks that we’re dumb as rocks.

I wonder, too, if the word “terrorism” alleviates any grief for those who have lost loved ones due to non-state enacted violence. Those who suffer the most under what we call terrorism seem to be people who are the most likely to be called terrorists themselves. Does the concept of moral evil and archaic barbarism help us move past loss? Or could it flatten our empathy as well as our capacity to understand contemporary life?

I remember 9/11 and I also remember the wars of the Bush and Obama Eras. Did the long War on Terror make our grief more intelligent and our loss more comprehensible? Or did it confuse us and provoke more death and destruction?

There’s things that the word terrorism makes possible—without it, we could not unequivocally condemn people. Without it, we could not confuse civilian life with military actions. Without it, we could not suspend due process from those who are accused.

But what are the things that the word “terrorism” renders impossible? Imagine, for a moment, that the word did not exist. Imagine, just for a moment, that when the word threatens to slip from your lips that you must look for new words, that you force yourself to search for a synonym for this word that exists without one.

What new words would we need to formulate in order to understand the world more fully? What would you learn about your own morality? Could you still evaluate the world the same way without this one word? Or are there moral stances that require unquestioned terror to exist without synonym and alienated safely and far away from all that we consider to be comprehensible?