Difference between Terrorism and Crime

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TERRORISM & CRIME

Crime is the behaviour that is socially unacceptable and causes harm to an individual or a group of individuals. Theft, robbery, burglary, corruption, embezzlement, physical and mental violence, rape and killing are categorised as crimes.

Terrorism is a concept that becomes hard to have a universally acceptable definition. This difficulty to pinpoint an act has been one of the main reasons why the world is grappling with a hundred headed monster called terrorism. Though everyone accepts that terrorism is a type of crime. This is an article that intends to differentiate between terrorism and crime.

There are laws to deal with crimes in all societies and punishments given to criminals with respect to the severity of these crimes. But the question is how does one decide on the punishment for a crime as big as killing hundreds of people with a single act of terrorism as has been the situation in recent times.

Terrorism that is create panic, and spread fear in the minds of a society. Terrorism is violence that personifies a naked truth that has spread it tentacles in all parts of the world. If we look back into history, even before ancient civilisations, punishments for some serious crimes were brutal in nature and given to criminals in the open for everybody to see and take a lesson from them. That was done to bring s fear in the minds of people so that they won’t indulge in such crimes. It would be described as state of terrorism but as it was meant for the overall goof and betterment of the society, it was accepted.

The modern system of crime and punishment is based on a judicial system where a criminal pleads guilty and is sentenced in jail with respect to his crime. But a terrorist, even when he is caught, never accepts guilty in his views, that what he has done is not wrong at all and it is done for good of a section of the population. This brings us to the origin or roots of terrorism and also the difficulty of finding a universally acceptable definition of terrorism.

Terrorism as an international danger is not new as many countries of the world are facing the wrath of terrorism for decades now. It is easy distinguish between a crime and act of terrorism on the grounds of guilt/innocence proceedings and sentencing processes. As a normal criminal, when he pleads guilty, is given a sentence in keeping with his crime and serves the sentence in the jail. But the act of terrorism works on a ideology. It is belief and faith the encourages to involve in acts of terrorism because they believe that this is the only way to make grievances heard or felt. 

Sardar Bhagat Singh threw bombs in a legislative assembly, he was considered as terrorist by the British administration and he was tried accordingly. But for entire India, he was a hero, martyr, a symbol of resistance to British oppression. 

The same way, the world saw terrorism until 9/11 happened. The images of twin towers collapsing and subsequent loss of 3000 lives shook the whole word and made the world say out loud that enough is enough. Those who were against terrorism came together under the leadership of the US and then the President of US event went to the extent of saying that nations that pledged support to war on terror were allies while those who were against it were rivals of the alliance. The world clearly got divided into those who were against terrorism and those who those who supported it.

The untiring efforts of the allies in the war on terror has led to many victories amidst irregular acts of violence involved in by terrorist but with the recent killing of Osama Bin Laden by American Forces in Pakistan. This is a clear sign that the civilized society is winning its war on terror and there is no place for horrible crime like terrorism in the civilised world. No ideology, no belief can justify killing of innocent people and no religion allows anybody to involve in such heinous crimes.