Terrorism Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 4

Terrorism - Essay Example This implies that terrorism has been used by left-wing and right-wing political parties, religious groups, nationalistic groups, ruling governments, revolutionaries, among others (Malisow and French 24). This paper shall seek to explain the moral and political aspects of terrorism as well as the issues that define and conceptualize the terrorism phenomenon. There are several documentaries and films that have been created to explicate the origin, as well as the issues that revolve around terrorism. Some of these documentaries include; The Weather Underground by Sam Green and Bill Siegel, The Power Nightmares by Adam Curtis, among others. These two documentaries extensively explore the concept of terrorism, how it came into being, its existence and how it is perceived by people of different cadres. First and foremost, it is worth noting that the two documentaries concur that terrorism came into existence as a form of revolution against issues that were the masses assumed were against h umanity and peaceful co-existence among people. In the documentary, The Weather Underground, Sam Green and Bill Siegel have explicated the manner in which a group of students revolted against some of the issues they felt the government was not addressing. The students, under an umbrella body known as Students for Democratic Society, protested against unequal rights of the African American people and the Vietnam War (Green and Siegel). After realizing that their peaceful demonstrations were being taken for granted, they resorted to terror. For instance, the smashed windows of government buildings and even set blew some with bombs. While blowing the government buildings, they passed word for people to vacate the buildings to ensure that no one was hurt (Green and Siegel). In this case, they respected the sanctity of life while agitating for their rights. This documentary plays an integral part in giving the history of American terrorists. On the hand, The Power Nightmares documentary explicates the rise and growth of Islamic terrorism and the perceived war on terror. Just like in The Weather Underground, Curtis’s documentary demonstrates that resentment and dissatisfaction with the state of things led to the rise of terrorism. However, according to Curtis, terrorism began with the Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian civil servant and the founder of modern Islamist school of thought, resentment of the western society’s morals and virtues (Curtis). Having stayed in America and witnessed the rot in the western morals as perpetrated by individualism, he opposed Gamal Abdel Nasser’s westernization of Egypt. Therefore, he aims at saving the society by restructuring it along Islamic lines. Additionally, he is convinced that his wish can only be achieved by creating an elite vanguard to facilitate a revolution. Consequently, he creates the Muslim Brotherhood of which he becomes the leader. He motivates other Islamists such as Ayman al-Zawahiri, who later becom es the mentor of Osama bin Laden (Curtis). They have a strong notion that westernized leaders can be killed in order to remove their corruption in the society. Curtis also reveals the rise of disillusioned liberals such as Paul Wolfowitz and Irving Kristol in America. They were agitating for th