Like Yossarian in Catch 22, I’m exercised by the fact that people are trying to kill me. You may remember that Yossarian was flying bombers over Italy in 1944 and German gunners were trying to shoot his plane down. Yossarian and I are in a similar spot. You might well think we ought not to take it personally. My enemies are also out to get any civilian they can blow up throughout Europe, America, and other Western places. Anyone will do. Indeed, statistically speaking, their main success has been in blowing up luckless Muslims who get in their way. They are obviously a dumb and nasty lot, but how shall we describe them? President Bush calls them “terrorists” and has declared war on them. Other people call them “Islamicists” because what goes through their rather defective minds as they blow us up has something to do with verses from the Koran. “Terrorists” is probably the preferable designation, if only for the reason that most Muslims are not trying to kill me. Indeed, murderous Muslims are said to be “a tiny minority,” and no doubt this is true, though I don’t know what the evidence is. In any case other sets of people—Irish republicans and Basque separatists, for example—have also had a go at bumping me off.

The deep thinkers of journalism and social sciences, however, are not happy with this designation of “terrorist.” Some are happy to use it only if they broaden it so as to