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"The book aims to clarify competing and confusing definitions of terrorism, and of terrorist acts, that proliferate in specialist publications as well as in popular discourse, and then to construct a concept of a terrorist act that both reflects a central core of the usages examined and provides for a more coherent and fruitful discussion of terrorism and its moral and political significance. The book's project thus treats the idea of meaning as not only involving a concern for semantic clarity, but also for probing various dimensions of what our understanding of terrorism can mean morally for complex social and political circumstances. The first two chapters sketch the types of definition abroad and propose what I call a tactical definition with a focus on terrorist acts as violent attacks upon non-combatants or innocents (in a special sense). I discuss the benefits of such an approach and defend it against numerous objections that can be and have been made to it. Chapter 3 discusses critically theorists who argue that, independent of its definition, terrorist acts have a special, and profoundly disturbing, moral significance. Chapter 4 explores the scope and meaning of non-combatant status and its relation to recent controversies in the philosophy of war. Chapters 5 and 6 discuss important attempted philosophical defences of terrorism for certain contexts. Chapter 7 discusses the moral challenges facing attempts at counter-terrorism, and Chapter 8 examines the commonly held view that religion is particularly prone to cause terrorism or some of its most extreme manifestations"

Terrorism. --- Terrorism --- Political philosophy. Social philosophy