Instituto Universitario Tecnológico de Oriente

4to Semester

Terrorism
When I was asked to make a speech I knew that it would be about terrorism,
because it is a topic that has always interested me; I would have to make a
research about terrorism but the first wall I found in my research was that there is
no one clear definition to the word “terrorism”, so this gave me a hint about the
complexity around terrorism. Some documentaries, comments and previous
knowledge were my only aid for achieving my aim.

As millennials, we are always surrounded with information and news from all
over the world, if we hear Middle East, Afghanistan, Syria or even the word “Islam”,
an image will come to our minds, maybe it is the two planes crashing into the
North and South towers of the World Trade Center in New York. This could be
since many terroristic attacks seem to be bound to a particular religion, but the
reality is more complex than we think, for that it is necessary to know the reasons
and origins of terrorism.

Terrorist organizations use violence against civilian populations in order to

produce fear among people and achieve political or social objectives, otherwise
these objectives would be impossible or really hard to achieve; this method is
consider without doubt a crime and it is morally wrong. Although social and political
injustice appears to be the main reason that motivates a terrorist, in some cases
there are terrorists motivated by their belief of anarchism.

Since the beginning of humanity, humans have been terrorized by humans

but the term terrorism was originated during the French Revolution, in what was
called the reign of terror, its leader was Maximilien Robespierre who believed that
terrorism was necessary to install stability and a better system in the country, he
said that:

“Terror is nothing other than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible".

Since the French revolution there have been many terrorist organizations
with different political reason whose objectives were to defeat their governments.
 Now in the 21st century, religious terrorism seems to be headline of all
newspapers, but the origin of all these organizations appears to be the same
“belief of injustice”, Al-Qaeda, Hamas, Boko Haram, ISIS, are some of the terrorist
organizations which justify their act with Islamic religion. ISIS is the organization
that is making the news recently, their objective is to establish a Sunni Islamic
State in Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Cyprus, and Southern
Turkey, according to the Sharia Laws, which are religious laws part of
the Islamic tradition.

But the darkest and most controversial part of this fight of power is that not
only can terrorist organizations cause terror but also some governments with their
actions should also be called terrorists but they prefer the name of “collateral
damage” or much better “collective punishment”; the terror tends to be mutual, the
minority, that are the terrorist organizations, has no other way than terrorism to
fight the superior forces that are the governments. The government cannot locate
the enemy to punish it and also terrorize supposed supporters of the enemy. At the
end of the day the only victim of this war seems to be innocent people.

Of course I am not a terrorist supporter but I believe that the terrorism has
formed part of our society since the beginnings of humanity and will exist as long
as there is injustice and a sun that shines in the sky; because it is a subject that
depends of the perspective of each one, that is the reason why there is no a clear
meaning for the word “terrorism”, it is an endless loop that always takes us to the
same place, for example:

 The Palestinians are too weak to confront the Israeli army. What
other option do they have?
 US invasions in Iraq and Afghanistan are not terrorism, but resistance
to these Invasions is terrorism, why?
 Why are not the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki considered terrorism?

The most important thing of my research was to understand that people

who suffer from injustice only have three ways to resist: Non-violent protest, war or
terrorism.

Non-violent protest is an amazing method; we can see many examples in

the history, Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, etc; but sometimes violence is regrettably
necessary to fight injustice, so we have two choices: war or terrorism, if you’re are
a government with the military force and money, you’d better go to the war to
destroy your enemies; but if not, you’d better become a terrorist, it is less
destructive but also psychologically harmful.