The Problem of Terrorism as a Term: Its Linguistic, Islamic Definitions and its Actual Use in Contemporary Reality

The paper presents a terminological study of the concept of terrorism as a language, a process and a reality. It examines the term terrorism in the Arabic dictionary and its various meanings that are limited to various derivations, namely: fear, threat, warning, inconvenience, lightness, worship, arrow and exhausted camels. The meaning of the term is examined as used in the Quran and Sunnah to help figure out its true implications that proved to be different from the linguistic reality. The term also proves to be different from its derivatives: fear of Allah the Almighty, human fear, worship and of asceticism. The paper aims to show how the actual meaning of the term is different from its linguistic and legislative reality and explores these differences to propose alternatives for the term. It also offers conclusions and recommendations while asserting that there is no legal or political consensus on the meaning of “terrorism” in the present time.