Dear Inner Circle,

While our city painfully mourns the loss of Curtis Cheng and wonders how a 15-year-old boy could take the life of a stranger, we find bewilderment and fear levels have lifted in our cultural atmosphere. Also bewildering is the number of people who suddenly appear as experts in terrorism and chat away on radio or TV as if we all accept some common understanding of the phenomenon. Surely this is not so. “Terrorism” has to be one of the clumsiest words in the English language. “Terror” describes a feeling. It gives no information about the cause of the feeling. It’s little wonder that every combatant in every struggle, calls the other side, “terrorists”. The clumsy nature of this language means that everyone is using the word correctly.

We pay a price for using clumsy language, not least is that we fail to recognise the grounds on which some resort to violence. We’re left thinking that there is a peculiar set of people who enjoy inflicting suffering on others for no reason. Thus we have no ground on which to criticise the actions of our own
government nor recognise overreach on our part.

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