![\"From](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/533\/2017\/06\/Finsbury_Park_mosque_-_panoramio.jpg\")
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The name of the Finsbury Park attacker has now been released<\/a>: \u00a0Darren Osborne, a 47 year old man from Cardiff, who ranted that \u201cthis is for London Bridge\u201d after the attack, according to eyewitness accounts<\/a>.<\/p>\n According to neighbors, he was not known or perceived of as racist, but was \u201cshouty\u201d and his mother reported that \u201chad been on medication for mental health problems.\u201d<\/p>\n He is alleged to have expressed increasingly antagonistic views towards Muslims in the weeks since the London Bridge atrocity. . .<\/p>\n Neighbour Saleem Naema, 50, a taxi driver, said: \u201cI can\u2019t believe it. I know him. I\u2019ve lived here for five years, he was already living here when I moved in.<\/p>\n \u201cIf I ever needed anything he would come. I just can\u2019t believe that he did that. I am a Muslim.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n So the story seems to be: \u00a0man with anger management issues loses it when terrorists attack, and seeks revenge by going after worshippers at a prominent religious site connected to the religion.<\/p>\n Is this terrorism?<\/p>\n Is this a \u201chate crime\u201d? \u00a0Is terrorism being re-defined as we speak to encompass \u201chate crimes\u201d?<\/p>\n Or is it something else?<\/p>\n The UK, as it happens, has a legislative definition<\/a> of terrorism, from the Terrorism Act of 2000. \u00a0Note that this predates the September 11th attacks, and seems to have its origins in their longstanding problems with the IRA, which we in the U.S. have forgotten about as a non-Islamic terrorist organization. \u00a0Here it is:<\/p>\n Section 1. \u2013 So whether this attack was terrorism doesn\u2019t seem to require, according to this definition, that the individual be affiliated with , or inspired by, an organized group like ISIS, only that the action is intended to advance a \u201cpolitical, religious, racial or ideological cause\u201d and that it is intended to \u201cintimidate the public or a section of the public.\u201d<\/p>\n Is revenge a \u201ccause\u201d? \u00a0Does mental illness influence whether an action is determined to intend to \u201cintimidate the public\u201d? \u00a0In fact, the more difficult part of the definition is this latter part \u2014 how do you separate out an explicit \u201cintention to intimidate\u201d?<\/p>\n But beyond this definition, it seems to me that terrorism has become another word in that battle of words. \u00a0It signifies importance: \u00a0hence the demand that the Finsbury Park attack be classified as such was a matter of proving that the authorities cared sufficiently. \u00a0And, in the U.S., arguments periodically surface on whether attacks by racists like Dylan Roof are \u201cterrorism\u201d or whether lynchings, in the past, were.<\/p>\n And Nabra Hassanen, the Muslim teen girl who was killed in Virginia early Sunday morning, was lumped in together with this attack, with twitter (and the Huffington Post<\/a>) demanding that this, too, be labelled \u201cterrorism\u201d; now it\u2019s being labelled by the police<\/a> as \u201croad rage\u201d though the Muslim community rejects this, e.g.:<\/p>\n \u201cRoad rage. Indeed,\u201d tweeted Rabia Chaudry, an attorney and senior fellow at the Washington-based U.S. Institute of Peace. \u201cIf you think for a minute that her appearance had nothing to do with this crime, you\u2019re lying to yourself.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n (In a twist, the girl\u2019s killer is an illegal immigrant from El Salvador<\/a>.)<\/p>\n So what happens next?<\/p>\n UPDATE:<\/p>\n Turns out, when I opened the Tribune today at lunch, there was an article on exactly the question of \u201cwhat is terrorism?\u201d \u00a0It was a reprinting of a Washington Post article<\/a> that precedes the Finsbury Park attack, and instead addresses the question of whether James T. Hodgekinson was a terrorist. \u00a0(The gist of it is summarized at International Business Times<\/a>\u00a0if you\u2019ve used up your views.) \u00a0And this article pretty much discards the question of discerning whether a killing is \u201cterrorism\u201d or not, but simply says that, absent a legal definition in the United States, and given that the common understanding that intent distinguishes terrorism from other mass killings is a fairly murky thing to discern in many cases,<\/p>\n One first step toward resolving the question of \u201cwhat is terrorism?\u201d \u2014 at least in the colloquial sense \u2014 is to stop focusing so much on the perpetrator\u2019s perceived intent and to look more at the effects of the violent act. Today, attackers such as Hodgkinson, Hasan, Rizwan, Malik, Loughner and Roof have one thing clearly in common: Even if it\u2019s not clear why, they want to kill as many people as possible. That should be enough to call them all terrorists.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Which is, on the one hand, makes a moral point that mass killings are all bad because they indeed kill people regardless of the motivation, but it misses the point that motivation does matter for us to understand the event, and that there is a meaningful difference in how we react to a killer with no motivation other than serious mental illness vs. someone who thinks he\u2019s advancing a cause.<\/p>\n Image: \u00a0From Wikipedia: https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File%3AFinsbury_Park_mosque_-_panoramio.jpg; Olof Lagerkvist [CC BY 3.0 (http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The name of the Finsbury Park attacker has now been released: \u00a0Darren Osborne, a 47 year old man from Cardiff, who ranted that \u201cthis is for London Bridge\u201d after the attack, according to eyewitness accounts. According to neighbors, he was not known or perceived of as racist, but was \u201cshouty\u201d and his mother reported that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":6736,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[653,353],"class_list":["post-6739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-finsbury-park-attack","tag-terrorism"],"yoast_head":"\n
\n(1) In this Act \u201cterrorism\u201d means the use or threat of action where-
\n(a) the action falls within subsection (2),
\n(b) the use or threat is designed to influence the government [or an international governmental organisation][2] or to intimidate the public or a section of the public, and
\n(c) the use or threat is made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious[, racial][3] or ideological cause.
\n(2) Action falls within this subsection if it-
\n(a) involves serious violence against a person,
\n(b) involves serious damage to property,
\n(c) endangers a person\u2019s life, other than that of the person committing the action,
\n(d) creates a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public, or
\n(e) is designed seriously to interfere with or seriously to disrupt an electronic system.
\n(3) The use or threat of action falling within subsection (2) which involves the use of firearms or explosives is terrorism whether or not subsection (1)(b) is satisfied.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n