The Law of Terror

During the French Revolution that the first terrorists were inspired by Roman Republican sacrifices to decapitate enemy compatriots in order to legitimate a modern republic.  Since, (the authors) are drawing what (they) think is an important connection between violent terrorism of jihadis and Jacobins, (we) shall not say that this is not the first time that the Terrorists and Robespierre in particular have been likened to a threat from the Muslim world. One source, speaking of Robespierre asserts that, “Coveting both the sceptre and the censer, he was consumed with the ambition of the fiend Mohammed–without having his genius or, above all, his courage. Pontiff and despot at the same time, he gathered a great number of followers for himself, pretending to believe, so that all believe that the French people had forgotten the existence of a superior intelligence. It was because he appeared to be restoring the cult of the Supreme Being, as if the French nation had ever renounced it…The mask has fallen. Catiline is no more, He and his infamous accomplices have paid with their heads for their horrible patricide, and the pen of the patriotic writer will no longer be restrained by fear.  The Moral Psychology of Terrorism: Implications for Security, edited by Jalil Roshandel, Nathan Lean.

Is there a moral response to terror?

Today in this country, when we call something “terrorism” we are making a moral judgment about the odious wrongness of the perpetrator but also about the right of the targeted group to feel that they are under threat and thus to be protected. http://www.vox.com/2015/6/18/8807433/charleston-shooting-terrorism.