What do you think of this crime of killing the Labour MP Jo Cox, is it an assassination or a terrorist act?
Salaam,
An assassination. I don't see how it was aimed at spreading terror.
If Anders Behring Breivik carried out the killings he carried out with the intention of spreading terror, then that was terrorism.
Insofar as it appears that at least part of the reason Omar Mateen carried out his attack was to spread terror, his attack was at least partly a terrorist one. It seems that he had more than one motivation for acting as he did (self-hate being one of them), but insofar as he claimed allegiance to IS before launching his attack, and insofar as IS have called for terrorist attacks, almost regardless of his motivations, his attack had the effect of spreading terror and on those grounds could be labelled a terrorist attack.
But I do agree that there is something of a tendency in many of the media, and in the pronouncements of others, to associate all Muslims with terrorists, and therefore to label all Muslim acts of violence (be they crimes, assassinations, acts of war, or acts of terrorism) as acts of terrorism. And that we should challenge this.
Wassalaam