Driving question: Why does terrorism happen, and what are the immediate and long-term impacts?
When I first learned that terrorism was going to be our new project, I was nervous. See while it sounded very interesting to me, I also was aware at how lacking I am in basic information about terrorist groups, events and people. Names were mentioned in class that I recognized but didn’t know, and even worse – names were mentioned that I had never heard of before. Lucky I found that many of my classmates around me were in the same boat and since we only had two weeks for this project it would be short. The project/idea sprint was still broken down into smaller sections which made it easier for me to get a handle on.
We started with learning the definition on terrorism, which may sound like a simple google search but trust me it’s not. In class we were given a 32 page PDF called “What is Terrorism”. Lucky we didn’t have to read the whole thing, in fact, we only looked at one section: “The Most Universally Accepted Definition”. And there is where we found out that there is no “single agreed apron definition” for terrorism.
We learned about the closet they could get:
“terrorism is the use of violence to create fear (i.e., terror, psychic fear) for (1) political, (2) religious, or (3) ideological reasons (ideologies are systems of belief derived from worldviews that frame human social and political conditions). The terror is intentionally aimed at noncombatant targets (i.e., civilians or iconic symbols), and the objective is to achieve the greatest attainable publicity for a group, cause, or individual.”
This lead us directly into our next part of our project/idea sprint which was the building knowledge section. This was going to include us watching four main videos on different types of terrorism: terrorism in the name of liberation, revolution, God, and state.
Terrorism in the Name of Liberation
This part was honestly the one with the most examples and interviews. It was so different than expected because the documentary had interviews with people who openly said they had killed people and didn’t feel remorse but like THEY WEREN’T IN JAIL OR ANYTHING. It was just such a foreign idea because it brings us back to this quote we often referred too:
Which was just crazy to think about because we are always told terrorism is a horrible, horrible choice but then we started to see some examples where people are being so strongly oppressed that maybe they didn’t have a choice? Maybe it is possible terrorism could be justified? Those questions would actually follow us through the whole project. While I don’t think I can agree that it can be justified, I don’t know if I can outright say that it can’t be. It definitely left me thinking a lot. Then in small groups we did a mini research project, my group did ours on the Troubles in Ireland. Check it out here!!
We then took a break from the videos to do a socratic seminar……..it didn’t go as planned. While I had improved since last time I did a seminar I still talked a lot less than I wanted to and found myself just sitting there trying to follow our conversation. As you can see in my reflection below, I didn’t prepare as much as I should’ve because of tests and other outside factors as well as I just got a little overwhelmed in the moment. This frustrated me because just a week before I had been a moderator for our panel discussion on the civil rights movement and I thought I did really well with the public speaking. This felt like a big step backwards. I was determined to do better on the final seminar.
Terrorism in the Name of a Revolution
This one showed again a lot of brutality but also more guilt than in the liberation documentary. In the interviews people stated things like “I have to say to myself that I killed two people”, “the fact that people died is difficult for me”, at the time it was justified”. There was one story about a group of terrorists who had taken someone hostage to get attention for their cause but where there were no concrete steps taken by the other side they shot him and one of the terrorists said this in an Interview:
“It was an awful day, I had been the one who contacted his friends and it was my job to tell them where the body would be….pretended to be someone else and told them where the body was … It was not a nice job … messenger of death.”
What I found most interesting about this topic was how no terrorism in the name of revolution has ever been successful. My group ended up looking specifically at the Shining Path terrorist group in Peru who was a lot more recently active than I would’ve ever thought. Check out our research here.
Terrorism in the Name of God
What surprised me most about this one was how there was a lot more intentional deaths of the terrorists. For example, suicide bombers were mentioned more than once and there would be people who shot up a temple and then killed themselves. There was one example of a plane hijacking where the terrorist said to the hostages “Don’t worry if you die you will go paradise and have 72 virgins waiting for you” and“You will die a martyr why are you scared?”. This honestly baffled me because at least for me, that’s something you hear about in movies or a dramatic podcast not an interview with a real victim. I guess this section really brought me to realize just how dedicated people can be to a cause and how beyond reason it can seem to someone with an outside perspective. This lead my group into our research topic: How can mass killings be seen as a form of religious commitment? I was most interested in the Luxor Massacre which involved the shooting of 70 people, who were mostly tourists, and ended in the suicide of all the terrorists. Here is our full research:
Terrorism in the Name of the State
This one was the saddest video by far, and while all of the videos before also included awful deaths and consequences, this video showed the intergenerational and long term effects. Here is a snippet of what the video talked about: “One of the more dangerous forms of terrorism…..tend to be far more capable…they are being trained by an established nation”. People throughout the video had so many differing opinions on if some of the acts counted as terrorism: “A strong interrogation is justified if it prevents worse crimes”, another person said “If you call that terrorism you are broadening the definition…terrorism is against civilians” and also “If they were fighting for freedom then they are using a disproportionate amount of violence”. The comment that really got to me is this idea that terrorism is against civilians and since the terrorist group was mainly attacking the government “they didn’t count”. This bothered me so much because minutes before we were hearing about how that group in Nicaragua who were killing civilians in countless awful ways. It seem like so many “unfortunate casualties” and the way they were killed was all awful making me realize that the man saying these things may not have seen the whole picture or at least was trying to find justification. The main reason I found this documentary so sad was because of “The Grandmothers of the Disappeared”. In Argentina there were decades of something called the Dirty War which caused tens of thousands of deaths and disappearances. There were even stories people people being pushed out of planes, alive. The grandmothers of the disappeared refers to the mothers of the pregnant women who were taken at the time and haven’t been seen since. One of the grandmothers said “we don’t know where are children are and we don’t know where our grandchildren are”. The idea of the terrorists was that they would take these women and men (mostly who were activists but not always) and kill them. They would take the newborn baby and give it to a military family to be raised. Today these grandmothers try to find and reunite with the grandchildren. This was very interesting to learn about and reminded me a lot about what has happened here with MMIWG. Read more here!!
Final Seminar
This brings us to the end of the project which ended with our final Socratic seminar. This one went much better then the last. I was more prepared, I used evidence, asked more questions and even searched up a definition to share with the group. While I maybe didn’t talk as much as other extending students, I talked much more and had more purpose in speaking than I did last time and I think it was definitely extending for me. What I really enjoyed was how the seminar didn’t feel like everyone was talking just to talk. We were debating, challenging ideas, giving evidence, adding new questions and bringing up moral debate. We talked about religion, how morals change around the world and how they don’t. I honestly wanted the conversation to carry on longer.
Overall I think this Idea Sprint was really intriguing and was on a topic I probably wouldn’t have looked into on my own currently. I liked learning about the differences between the different types of terrorism and how its not always just Black and White like I feel it’s often portrayed, rather it has so many more layers and things you need to look into to really understand. I am not at all saying terrorism is ever justified, I am just saying that looking more closely into topics is important because prospective matters.