Holy Terror

An Ontario Supreme Court judge has changed how and why the authorities can charge anyone with terrorism. Motive, apparently, is no longer within the scope of defining who is a terrorist. Associating with, or being sympathetic with people who plot or foment nasty deeds should not fall under the microscope of the security scrutinizers. Only when they commit an act of violence that forces or coerces the government (or individuals) to do their bidding, can the authorities detain these folk we formerly thought were bad eggs.

Once again, the courts have made a definition in law that perhaps parliament did not intend. We may now spend some time and money on lawyers sorting this all out. The extraordinary powers granted here and in the US in the aftermath of 9/11 no doubt trampled on citizen rights, but where Canadians are now challenging this concept, the Americans continue to take citizen’s rights away – especially citizens of other countries who step on Uncle Sam’s toes. Of course, many of us, excepting the RCMP, now realize serious mistakes have been made in labelling some people as terrorists.

Acts of violence are not very difficult to recognize, but coercion, while often just as effective, can be much more subtle. Bombs, whether attached to subway trains or flown or driven into buildings, are definitely terrorizing. They kill and injure people, often indiscriminately. But the very threat of these and other acts of terror can be just as debilitating to a country and its people. The attacks of 9/11 brought a nation to its knees. The periodic threat of bombs in shoes, explosive gels on aircraft and similar plots are enough to keep everyone on edge. They are enough to force, or coerce the government into making laws and rules that impinge on citizen rights.

But these, according to an Ontario judge, are not sufficient acts in themselves to be called acts of terrorism. They may indeed be criminal acts, if the perpetrators are apprehended after the fact, but planning and talking about these acts is apparently neither criminal nor a terrorist act.

Of course, we all face our own terrors, private and public. So many people feared large biting dogs that we had them banned, and that was probably a good thing. Some people fear riding in elevators and they have to climb the stairs. Some fear crowds and live in isolation, some fear spiders and snakes and have to take to the bottle to relieve their anxieties.

I had a young cousin, who at the age of five or six, was called a Holy Terror and we all stayed clear of him. He was always causing trouble, fighting, breaking things and a real pain in the neck, although he turned out to be a rather ordinary man in the course of time. As with most of our terrors, a little education can clear up most of our fears. We learn there is little to fear in riding the elevator up five floors to see the Mayor, that spiders, in our country, are really quite harmless. Snakes slither because that is what they do, and they are certainly not slimy.

Maybe if the colonizing nations had better understood the people and their ways of the nations they subjected, we would have fewer problems with rights and charters now. Perhaps if the US, Britain and the other super powers had understood what they were doing economically to third-world countries, they might have realized that they were creating enemies. Poor or disadvantaged people will revolt and fight for their fair treatment and their share of the economic pie. If they cannot fight through the courts or by voicing their dissent, they will turn to other means. And too often, that is terrorism or the threat of terrorism in any one of its many guises.

The way to defeat terrorism is to recognize the source of the problems facing a people. If education and economic resources can bring people into the mainstream of our society, we have no excuse for not doing this. If, however, the source of the problem is irrational, such as religious beliefs, we have a much more difficult chore ahead of us. If we have created a situation where economic and belief systems both are the source of anger, then we have a problem that may take generations to resolve. I fear this holy terror is situation in many of the trouble spots around the world today.

Will the holy terror, like the one of my childhood, resolve itself over the passing years? Somehow, with reason and education, terrorism must be stricken from the list of our human problems.