[edit] United Kingdom
The United Kingdom defined acts of terrorism in the Terrorism Act 2000 as the use of threat of action where:
(a) the action falls within subsection (2),
(b) the use or threat is designed to influence the government or to intimidate the public or a section of the public and
(c) the use or threat is made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause.
(2) Action falls within this subsection if it
(a) involves serious violence against a person,
(b) involves serious damage to property,
(c) endangers a person's life, other than that of the person committing the action,
(d) creates a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public or
(e) is designed seriously to interfere with or seriously to disrupt an electronic system.
Section 34 of Terrorism Act 2006 amended sections 1(1)(b) and 113(1)(c) of Terrorism Act 2000 to include "international governmental organisations" in addition to "government".

[edit] Laws and government agencies
U.S. Code of Federal Regulations: "...the unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives" (28 C.F.R. Section 0.85).
Current U.S. national security strategy: "premeditated, politically motivated violence against innocents."
United States Department of Defense: the "calculated use of unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or intimidate governments or societies in pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological." [15]
USA PATRIOT Act: "activities that (A) involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the U.S. or of any state, that (B) appear to be intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion, or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping, and (C) occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S."
The U.S. National Counter Terrorism Center (NCTC) described a terrorist act as one which was: "premeditated; perpetrated by a subnational or clandestine agent; politically motivated, potentially including religious, philosophical, or culturally symbolic motivations; violent; and perpetrated against a noncombatant target." [1]
The British Terrorism Act 2000 defines terrorism so as to include not only violent offences against persons and physical damage to property, but also acts "designed seriously to interfere with or seriously to disrupt an electronic system".[2] This latter consideration would include shutting down a website whose views one dislikes. However, this, and any of the other acts covered by the definition would also need to be (a) designed to influence the government or to intimidate the public or a section of the public, AND (b)be done for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause.[the latter three terms are not defined in the Act]. [3]
The Supreme Court of India adopted Alex P. Schmid's definition of terrorism in a 2003 ruling (Madan Singh vs. State of Bihar), "defin[ing] acts of terrorism veritably as 'peacetime equivalents of war crimes.'"[4]

[edit] Individuals
Schmid and Jongman (1988): "Terrorism is an anxiety-inspiring method of repeated violent action, employed by (semi-)clandestine individual, group, or state actors, for idiosyncratic, criminal, or political reasons, whereby-in contrast to assassination-the direct targets of violence are not the main targets. The immediate human victims are violence are generally chosen randomly (targets of opportunity) or selectively (representative or symbolic targets) from a target population, and serve as message generators. Threat- and violence-based communication processes between terrorist (organization), (imperiled) victims, and main targets are use to manipulate the main target (audience(s), turning it into a target of terror, a target of demands, or a target of attention, depending on whether intimidation, coercion, or propaganda is primarily sought".[16]
L. Ali Khan: "Terrorism sprouts from the existence of aggrieved groups."[17]
Jack Gibbs (1989): "Terrorism is illegal violence or threatened violence directed against human or nonhuman objects, provided that it: (1) was undertaken or ordered with a view to altering or maintaining at least one putative norm in at least one particular territorial unit or population: (2) had secretive, furtive, and/or clandestine features that were expected by the participants to conceal their personal identity and/or their future location; (3) was not undertaken or ordered to further the permanent defense of some area; (4) was not conventional warfare and because of their concealed personal identity, concealment of their future location, their threats, and/or their spatial mobility, the participants perceived themselves as less vulnerable to conventional military action; and (5) was perceived by the participants as contributing to the normative goal previously described (supra) by inculcating fear of violence in persons (perhaps an indefinite category of them) other than the immediate target of the actual or threatened violence and/or by publicizing some cause."[citation needed]
David Rodin (Oxford Philosopher): "Terrorism is the deliberate, negligent, or reckless use of force against noncombatants, by state or nonstate actors for ideological ends and in the absence of a substantively just legal process."[5]
Walter Laqueur: "Terrorism constitutes the illegitimate use of force to achieve a political objective when innocent people are targeted."[citation needed]
James M. Poland: "Terrorism is the premeditated, deliberate, systematic murder, mayhem, and threatening of the innocent to create fear and intimidation in order to gain a political or tactical advantage, usually to influence an audience."[citation needed]
M. Cherif Bassiouni: "'Terrorism' has never been defined..."[18]
Robespierre (17 pluviôse an II = 5/2/1794):"Terror is nothing other than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible; it is therefore an emanation of virtue; it is not so much a special principle as it is a consequence of the general principle of democracy applied to our country's most urgent needs." Original:"La terreur n'est autre chose que la justice prompte, sévère, inflexible; elle est donc une émanation de la vertu; elle est moins un principe particulier, qu'une conséquence du principe général de la démocratie, appliqué aux plus pressants besoins de la patrie."[citation needed]

[edit] Other
League of Nations Convention (1937): all criminal acts directed against a State and intended or calculated to create a state of terror in the minds of particular persons or a group of persons or the general public.

[edit] Criticisms of the term
Jason Burke, an expert in radical Islamic activity, has this to say on the word "terrorism":
"There are multiple ways of defining terrorism, and all are subjective. Most define terrorism as 'the use or threat of serious violence' to advance some kind of 'cause'. Some state clearly the kinds of group ('sub-national', 'non-state') or cause (political, ideological, religious) to which they refer. Others merely rely on the instinct of most people when confronted with innocent civilians being killed or maimed by men armed with explosives, firearms or other weapons. None is satisfactory, and grave problems with the use of the term persist. Terrorism is after all, a tactic. The term 'war on terrorism' is thus effectively nonsensical. As there is no space here to explore this involved and difficult debate, my preference is, on the whole, for the less loaded term 'militancy'. This is not an attempt to condone such actions, merely to analyse them in a clearer way." ("Al Qaeda", ch.2, p.22)
Other arguments include that:
There is no strict worldwide commonly accepted definition.
Any definition that could be agreed upon in, say, English-speaking countries would be biased towards those countries.
Almost every serious attempt to define the term have been sponsored by governments who instinctively attempt to draw a definition which excludes bodies like themselves.
Most groups called "terrorist" deny such accusations. Virtually no organisation openly calls itself terrorist.
Many groups call all their enemies "terrorist".
The word is very loosely applied and very difficult to challenge when it is being used inappropriately, for example in war situations or against non-violent persons.
It allows governments to apply a different standard of law to that of ordinary criminal law on the basis of a unilateral decision.
There is no hope that people will ever all agree who is "terrorist" and who is not.
The term as widely used in the West reflects a bias towards the status quo. Violence by established governments is sold as "defence", even when that claim is considered dubious by some; any attempt to oppose the established order through military means, however, is often labelled "terrorism".
If we labelled groups terrorist on the basis of how their opponents perceive them, such labels would be very controversial, for example:
State of Israel, USA, but also the states of Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan under the rule of the Taliban
The Contemporary Palestine Liberation Organization
Groups conducting revolution, such as the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), are routinely denigrated as "terrorist"
Almost all guerrilla groups (like Tamil Tigers or Chechen rebels) are accused of being "terrorist", but almost all guerrilla groups accuse countries they fight against of likewise being "terrorist".
Resistance movements during World War II. For instance, French revolting against Nazi occupation of France (see also Vichy Government).

[edit] References