Definition of a Terrorist

Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold and Seung-Hui Cho killed 44 people between the three of them. Umar Farouk Adbulmutallab and Nidal Malik Hasan killed 12 people between the two of them. What I am having a hard time understanding is why are not all five considered to be terrorists? The social and media climate have seemed to determine that Nidal Malik Hassan and Umar Farouk Abulmutallab are the only two terrorists out of that group. My only question is based on what I know the definitions of a terrorist and terrorism to be, what makes these two terrorists and the other three just troubled individuals that didn't know how to cope with the hardships of life?

What defines a terrorist as being a terrorist? Does it depend on their motivations? Does a religious or political catalyst mean more than a philosophical or social catalyst as far as defining what makes a terrorist and what does not? I would never deny that in what we know about Hassan and Abulmutallab, they are without a doubt terrorists. I would never deny the same being true for Harris, Klebold, and Cho either. With Hassan and Abulmutallad being Musilm, is that what defines them as being terrorists? That is what are social climate seems to indicate. All Muslims might not be terrorists, but all terrorists appear to be Muslim is the rallying cry it seems. The times are easy to get that point across. I just don't understand the inconsistencies in how things are reported and how we as a society and culture receive the information that we are fed. Obviously there are agendas that help dictate and mold and define the eras in which we live and have lived. I just hope that as a society, we can weed out the agendas and reason on our own to see things as they are and not as how the agendas make it seem to be.

It seems to me that it is dictated to us as a society as to what we must fear. The attack is on our ability to fear. To me that is what we believe in the most is our fear. Every agenda seeps its way through our psyche by our openness to our fears. That is how we see things and that is how we are taught to see things. I am just not sure if we realize it. The times are already bad enough on their own. The day and age in which we live is riddled with negative energies and misunderstandings. But we should not make them worse by being blind to the processes in how we have gotten to this point. To be blinded by fear is to never see things clearly. And to live in fear is to live without faith. We can't have faith in agendas. Agendas are not proven to be true all be it they are proven to define the times.

The issue I find most concerning is that it would seem that in this era, Muslim people are the only people capable of being a terrorist based on what we see through the eyes of the media. The media presents the information in a way that combined with our ability to fear what they report and respond to, we don't even rationalize and compare from different events and reason with everything else we know to be true in what other people have done within the confines of our own culture and our own society without any outside influences. Hence Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Their actions are no different than anyone that should be labeled a terrorist. They had just as much blood on their hands and affected more people directly through fear in my opinion. Anyone that was a student was more aware of the surrounding students in every classroom across America for the days directly after the event in Columbine. The same thing with Seung-Hi Cho. He terrorized an entire college campus and yet never was referred to as a terrorist. I just have to ask and need to have explained to me as to what is the difference? Even in what we call a hate crime. If we can reasonably say that the Muslim terrorists do what they do because of some internal hatred towards our society, then why not call it a hate crime instead of terrorism? Or why not call a cross burning in someone's yard an act of terrorism and not just a hate crime? It makes you wonder.

I will say lastly that it seems to me that the media makes it seem as if the cause or the belief is what causes the pain and not the people that commit the acts of violence. In anything else that you can think that has to be learned, we have a funny way of misunderstanding the things that we are taught and even the people teaching what we are supposed to learn can teach misunderstandings based on how they see things. So at the root the subject is pure more often than not, but the same cannot always be said for us receiving the lessons in how we interpret what is supposed to be learned. It is kind of like saying guns kill people instead of people kill people. It is true that guns are used as an extension of the person using it. But the gun has no intent. Only the person that pulls the trigger can have intent. It is never the cause or even the weapon behind the cause that is the deliverer of misunderstanding. It is always up to the individuals and how they interpret what is to be understood. Being blind to this, is living with misunderstanding. We can't let misunderstanding be the vehicle for any cause.