a terrifying act, but not terrorism

last weekend, a 28-year-old somali man broke into the home of kurt westergaard, the political cartoonist behind the most famous of the infamous mohammed cartoons that appeared in danish newspaper jyllands posten in 2005 - you know the one which depicted mohammed with a bomb as his turban. the young man had an axe and he was bent on killing westergaard because of his cartoon. it was big news and even BBC world ran the story again and again all weekend.

the young somali didn't succeed, westergaard locked himself in his specially-secured bathroom and set off the alarm direct to the police. they were there within three minutes. the somali tried to run and threw his axe at the police, after which he was shot three times in the hand and leg to prevent him from fleeing and taken into custody. most shaken was westergaards 5-year-old granddaughter who was sitting at the table in her pajamas when the incident happened.

this is a gravely serious incident and it has everything to do with a clash of extremist islam against core western beliefs like freedom of speech. in a way, it's not unlike the fatwa against salman rushdie over the satanic verses - with fanatics of a religion against a purveyor of freedom of artistic expression.

on sunday berlingske devoted 8 pages to calling it terrorism. it is careless use of that word, begun by bush and his cronies, that has brought us to a point where it begins to feel quite meaningless. terrorism is an act of aggression against a group of innocent people - a suicide bomber in a crowded marketplace or metro, the airplanes bringing down the world trade center - those are terrorism. but an assassination attempt on an individual over a specific incident, while undoubtedly terrifying to the individuals involved, is not terrorism. and to call it such takes away meaning from true acts of terrorism.

we need to be more careful than this with the language.