When is Terrorism not Terrorism? When the CBC says it isn’t

By Phil Gurski

OTTAWA — Of all the terms in the English language that have led to arguments over what exactly they mean, terrorism has to be at or near the top. Phrases such as “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter,” the tendency of dictators to call anyone who slights them a “terrorist” and, at least in Canada, the sheer queasiness about using this word to describe someone all muddy the waters.

But the CBC may have hit a new low. According to Warren Kinsella in an article in the Toronto Sun, Basem Boshra, described as “Senior Director of Journalistic Standards and Public Trust at CBC News,” allegedly wrote a memo to reporters in which he stated: “Do not refer to the Sept. 11 attacks as terrorist attacks.”

Let us think about this for a second.

The wanton killing of more than 3,000 people 25 years ago in New York, Washington and Shanksville, Pa., by 19 men who hijacked four planes and flew them into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon — all of whom were avowed members of Al Qaeda, a known terrorist group that proudly claimed the attacks — should instead be described, and again I quote, as follows: “The hijackings led to passenger jet crashes.”

Before you lose your lunch and call for the CBC to be defunded, please read on.

The CBC justified this call by saying that the corporation’s “longstanding language guidance regarding the terms ‘terrorist’ and ‘terrorism’ is a preference for the use of these words with attribution, a practice shared by many of the world’s top journalistic organizations.”

Whether Al Jazeera, MSNBC, the BBC, Fox News or The Onion, for that matter, calls it a terrorist event is irrelevant. Would it not have made more sense for the CBC to follow what Canadian law says about terrorism?

In Section 83.01 of the Canadian Criminal Code, terrorism is defined as — I am cutting it down to the essentials — “an act that is committed in whole or in part for a political, religious or ideological purpose, objective or cause … with the intention of intimidating the public and causes death or serious bodily harm to a person by the use of violence.”

Seems pretty clear to me.

Was Al Qaeda driven by a political, ideological or religious purpose? Check. Did the act intimidate the public? Check. Did it cause death through violence? Check.

Hence, it was an act of terrorism.

Where is the doubt here? I would add that Al Qaeda — which, I repeat, claimed the 9/11 attacks — is a listed terrorist entity in Canada and elsewhere, and has been since 2002, when terrorist listings came out.

It has been active for at least 40 years, killed tens of thousands over that time, spawned tens of affiliated groups, attracted an incalculable number of adherents and remains very active on a global scale today.

I may be biased, having spent 15 years as a counterterrorism analyst at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and written eight books on the subject since my retirement in 2015 — including the most recent, 9/11: The Unfinished Battle — but there does not appear to be a lot of gray area here. My cat knew this was terrorism, and he has been dead for a decade.

Did my cat know more than the CBC? It would appear so.

I do not want to get into why this official thought it necessary to send this memo, why no one pushed back and questioned its wisdom or what the endgame is. I simply want to point out that while there are cases in which there is legitimate debate — violent incels and “nihilists,” for example — over what is and is not terrorism, this one is not even close.

If it walks like a jihadi duck, talks like a jihadi duck and kills like a jihadi duck, it is a jihadi terrorist duck.

End of story.

Phil Gurski served for more than 30 years as an analyst in the Canadian intelligence community. In 2001 he joined CSIS where he was a strategic analyst, specializing in homegrown Al Qaeda-inspired terrorism and radicalization to violence. His new book is available for pre-order.