The following article was written by Lena as a part of her revision for the a-levels on English Language in 2005. I hope this will be handy for anyone having to revise for “English GK”
In his article “The definition of terrorism” Brian Whitaker points out the American state department’s definition of terrorism and the problems which are connected with it.
The Headline of the article seems to be a matter of fact. The reader expects a precise definition of terrorism. In the subtitle it becomes clear that Whitaker doesn’t want to give simply a definition of terrorism but rather wants to illustrate that many definitions are influenced by self-interests.
The article can be divided into four parts. The first part deals with international terrorism figures, which give the reader a first overview about the terrorism definition problem. It is striking that there exists almost twice more terrorism cases in Europe than in the Middle East. To underline the contradiction between the reality and the announced figures the author uses the imperative “Decide for yourself whether to believe this,” to show that the reader has to be skeptical by reading the figures. By using the word “meaningless” and the quotation of the report “no one definition of terrorism has gained universal acceptance” the author emphasizes that there does not exist one general definition of terrorism. It becomes clear that the figures he meant before seems to wrong because of the definition problem.
In the second part Whitaker refers to the state department’s definition of terrorism. He uses a quotation to reproduce the definition. By using the word “key point” Whitaker wants to illustrate that terrorism is very often politically motivated. The political aspect differs terrorism from murder. Whitaker doesn’t mention the religious aspect of terrorism which becomes especially after 9/11 very important. Due to the definition that terrorism must be politically motivated in Saudi Arabia there wasn’t a criminal act published as terrorism act. Another problem is that after the definition of the state department a criminal attack can only called terrorism if it is an attack against people and not against property. In the third part Whitaker uses an example of the attack against the pipeline in Colombia which wasn’t called a terror act to convince the reader that a new definition of terrorism is required. He underlines his statement by giving another example for the definition problem.
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