Western states reframed non-state political violence from legitimate insurgency into pathological terrorism

Evidence

US officials’ attribution of terrorism committed by Muslims to Islam was facilitated by a shift in Western states’ treatment of political violence. Prior to the 1970s, Western policy makers and intellectuals treated non-state political violence as insurgency grounded in material grievances. But as Palestinian liberation groups’ violence against the Israeli occupation crossed borders into Europe, Western countries considered terrorism a form of psychopathology that violated universal norms. In turn, terrorists were characterized as evil, irrational, pathological, and fundamentally different from the United States and its state allies whose violence was morally justified. The idea that political violence arose out of legitimate, resolvable grievances was rejected outright. Instead, all violence by non-state actors against the United States and Europe was condemned as terrorism equivalent to an illegitimate act of war. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 660 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Terrorism shook Western faith that welfare state reforms eliminate civil strife; Western media framed Palestinian violence outside its political context; Western states reframed non-state political violence as psychopathology to strip it of legitimacy — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes…, 660 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Western states reframed non-state political violence as psychopathology to strip it of legitimacy #expands (0.96) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 660
• The war on terror is linguistically camouflaged state violence #complicates (0.74)