TERRORISM OR NOT TERRORISM?
Events at the church have been under a bigger spotlight given the events of the days preceding it.
Despite early misinformation, police said they believe the Bondi killer, Joel Cauchi, was not motivated by a larger political cause – that is, a terrorist motivation. Instead, they say he lashed out violently because of anger control issues related to mental ill-health.
But of the six people he killed, five were women. Women also make up the majority of those injured. The one man who lost his life, security guard Faraz Tahir, a Muslim refugee from Pakistan, was attacked because he bravely rushed towards danger in an attempt to try to stop Cauchi. New South Wales Police Commissioner Karen Webb said Cauchi deliberately targeted women.
So if someone is targeting a specific group of people, isn’t that terrorism? Why does it matter if they were killing based on gender or religion? Is misogyny not terrorism?
Put simply, the defining characteristic of terrorism is perpetuating violence in the name of a higher, broader cause. Terrorists have a belief in a collective goal, and see themselves as being backed by people who share that belief. Misogyny can be an element of their motivation and justification of hatred, but it’s part of a larger political project.
Basically, it boils down to whether these violent actors think they’re part of a political or religious movement that’s going to change the system, or whether they are simply angry men projecting loathing and driven by personal demons. The two, of course, are not mutually exclusive.
This is not to undermine the damage angry men can, and do, inflict. Domestic violence is a bigger threat to Australians than terrorism. Calling something a terrorist act doesn’t make it more or less serious than anything else, rather the categorisation is to provide conceptual clarity for the sake of the ensuing investigation.
Events at Westfield Bondi Junction and the Assyrian Christ The Good Shepherd Church are both awful, but while they share some similarities, they are different sorts of crimes with different drivers and enablers. As police investigations continue, we’ll come to better understand the nature of both.
Greg Barton is Chair in Global Islamic Politics at Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University. This commentary first appeared on The Conversation.
