Explain why the term ‘terrorism’ is controversial and contested. (15)

Terrorism refers to political violence that targets civilians deliberately and indiscriminately to inspire dear, for purposes such as drawing attention to a grievance, provoking a severe response or wearing down of their opponents moral resolve. Examples of such high priority methods of terrorism include plane hijacking (e.g. 9/11) and hostage taking. With the use of the media, there is now greater global awareness of extremist, terrorist groups; it is the high priority means of creating terror that cause a group to receive attention. Non-state actors, furthermore, generally carry out terrorism.
The term itself carries a heavy weight by the way it can be used; to accuse a group as being terrorists immediately delegitimize their motives, thereby upholding the existing system of power at a national or global level.
‘Terrorism’ is a controversial term simply by how one determines whether one is a terrorist or not. Terrorism is used politically in order to highlight a group’s actions as being immoral and illegitimate. The controversy lies within how we differentiate between one man’s freedom fighter and another’s terrorism. Similarly the term ‘terrorism’ has become to commonly used which creates uncertainty of what really is terrorism, for example the Boston marathon bombings. Many argued that the marathon bombings were an act of terrorism, whereas Obama refused to describe it as an act of terror. Thus one could conclude that the term is arbitrary seeing as any form of violence creates fear, it does not necessarily mean that it is an act of terrorism.
A rather widespread attempt to make all definitions of terrorism meaningless is to lump together terrorist activities and the struggle to achieve national liberation. Thus, for instance, the recurrently stated Syrian official position is that Syria