What is a Terrorist?
Religious Studies: KS3, topic 3.3.15
What is a Terrorist?
Terrorists engage in a form of violent action to try to bring about religious or political change.
What is a terrorist?
- Some people have used violent action because they lived in a time and place where there was no democracy.
- Without democracy, violence was the only way to bring about change.
- More recently, violent action has been used by people who do not believe in democratic change.
- This may be because they want to impose something they know the majority of people would never vote for.
Terrorism
- The word terror means 'great fear'.
- On that basis, we could say that a terrorist is one who wants to create a state of fear in people.
- We know that terrorists use extreme violence.
- But most terrorists understand that they are not strong enough to overcome national armies.
- Because of this, they are not engaged in a traditional form of war.
Violence
- Terrorists' violence is often indiscriminate and unpredictable, often targeted at people going about their day to day business.
- In this was terrorists hope to create a continuous state of war.
- This way terrorists hope that people will put pressure on their governments to give in to the terrorists' demands.
Test yourself on What is a Terrorist?
What does the word 'terror' mean?
What is usually terrorists' ultimate goal?