In 2013, President Barack Obama pointed out that more people are killed in the United States in car crashes than in terrorist attacks. More recently, he said that more people are killed by handguns in the United States than by terrorist attacks. Both statements are true. His intention in making these statements was to put terrorism into perspective, in order to calm the public and keep terrorism from defining our national policy. Obviously, his argument did not achieve its rational goals. Terrorism clearly frightens people more than other threats do. Some argue that people are overreacting to terrorism. However, comparisons with automobile accidents fail to capture the profound difference between the two, a difference that isn’t reflected in the simple probabilities of dying by various means. And this difference is the reason that fear of terrorism is an appropriate response.
Americans and Europeans know intuitively that we are, as individuals, highly unlikely to be killed in a terrorist attack, but we also know such attacks are almost inevitable and that some of us will be the victims. It is terrifying to think that there are people who at this very moment are planning attacks with the goal of causing as many deaths and injuries as possible.
To understand how people respond to different threats, we need to look at the psychology of risk. Automobile deaths are generally not intended, and people who are about to have a car accident do not wake in the morning expecting or planning to die. Gun deaths may be accidental or planned, but even the ones that are planned are generally not part of a major, well-integrated plot. Some shootings have involved relatively large numbers of casualties; they have been the work of individuals or small groups. Though such shootings may be intended, they remain unrelated to one another rather than centrally organized by a malevolent network bent on destruction. Therefore, what differentiates gun and automobile deaths from terrorism is organized intentionality.
Terrorism draws its motivation from a clear and organized intention. Terrorists believe they are acting out a moral imperative on behalf of a well-established organization. Terrorists are not maniacs, and terrorism is not an accident. Terrorism is carefully planned yet invisible until it strikes. This is one of terrorism’s most powerful aspects. Neither the time nor place is predictable. And the moment public fear subsides, terror may erupt again.
Lone wolves are alone to the extent that no one directly helps them plan or execute an attack. But even as they act alone, they may draw their inspiration from a supposed moral principle. European left-wing terrorists in the 1970s and 1980s relied on transitory moral principles. They were easily defeated because they self-destructed as a result of internal squabbles and defections that reflected a lack of clarity in their beliefs and the weakness of their bonds.
Islamist terrorism is different. It draws its strength from a cohesive doctrine with a deep history. As with all religions built on revelation, there is deep disagreement within Islam between the demands imposed by revelation and the interpretations conceived by later religious authorities. But a powerful case can be made that Islamic terrorists cannot be separated from the Islamic religion. They are Muslims, and their violent interpretation of their religious doctrines is a powerfully destructive trend, even if it is not dominant within contemporary Islam. In addition, the concept of jihad, defined in the military sense, has played a critical role in shaping the evolution of Islam. Armed Islamist non-state actors have built their ideology on historical precedent. The fact that most Muslims today do not believe in jihad as the terrorists have interpreted it is not as important as is the fact that some do believe in it and are willing to act on t hat belief and kill for their cause.
There is an inhumanity, not in the Islamist terrorists’ cruelty—cruelty is common—but in their sense of what life and death mean. Islamist terrorists welcome death. Many groups—not just IS and al-Qaida but also Hamas, Hezbollah, and others—have promoted the saying “We love death more than you love life.” This idea has its origins in the statement of a prominent 7th-century Muslim general who was engaged in jihad against the Persian Empire. Terrorists who have no fear of dying rob us of a key weapon we wield in conducting warfare: the threat of death. The purpose of killing in war is not to simply eliminate enemy soldiers; it is to demoralize them by convincing them that death awaits. But this threat no longer has power when the enemy doesn’t fear death. What makes terrorism more frightening is that we do not know how many jihadists there are, how many need to be killed, or even how we can recognize them a mong the innocent.
When we see pictures of terrorists calmly pushing luggage carts in an airport, it is not their courage that stands out, nor their willingness to die, but the sense that death does not mean to them what it means to us. We speak of dehumanizing people by regarding them as “other” or alien. These terrorists are “other.” They are not like us in the fundamental sense that they say they prefer death over life—and by every indication, they do. We are, of course, terrified by the randomness and the violence of the terrorists, but what is more frightening is the terrorist himself.
This point brings us back to the question of what the appropriate response to terrorism should be. Obama wants to put our fear of terrorism into context—but we have seen that terrorism is not like other threats we face. It is invisible, pitiless, and very real. Terrorism is designed to transform the souls of potential victims. As Lenin is said to have remarked, “The purpose of terror is to terrify.” Those who claim not to be afraid may characterize our fear of terrorism as excessive, but perhaps those who think they have rationalized away their fear of terrorism simply don’t understand it or may feel personally immune to the danger it presents.