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‘terrorist�� is a description that has almost never been voluntarily adopted by any individual or group. It is applied to them by others, first and foremost by the governments of the states they attack.
The USA, for instance, defines it as ‘the calculated use or threat of violence to inculcate fear, intended to coerce or intimidate governments or societies��; the UK as ‘the use or threat, for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, or ideological course of action, of serious violence against any person or property��.

‘one person’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter��

The terrorist is noble, terrible, irresistibly fascinating, for he combines in himself the two sublimities of human grandeur: the martyr and the hero. From the day he swears in the depths of his heart to free the people and the country, he knows he is consecrated to death. He goes forth to meet it fearlessly and can die without flinching, not like a Christian of old, but like a warrior accustomed to looking death in the face.
Proud as Satan rebelling against God, he opposed his own will to that of the man who alone, amid a nation of slaves, claimed the right of having a will . . . The terrorist is immortal. His limbs may fail him, but, as if by magic, they regain their vigour, and he stands erect, ready for battle after battle until he has laid low his enemy and liberated the country. And already he sees that enemy falter, become confused, cling desperately to the wildest means, which can only hasten his end. - Serge Stepniak-Kravchinski, Underground Russia (1883)

A recent college textbook on terrorism identifies three functional levels of state terrorism: intimidation (to discourage dissent and opposition); coerced conversion (to alter lifestyle [sic]); genocide �� deliberate extermination of an entire class, ethnic, or religious group.

We believe that carrying out armed struggle will affect the people’s consciousness of the nature of the struggle against the state. By beginning the armed struggle, the awareness of its necessity will be furthered. This is no less true in the US than in other countries throughout the world. Revolutionary action generates revolutionary consciousness; growing consciousness develops revolutionary action. Action teaches the lessons of fighting and demonstrates that armed struggle is
possible. - Weather Underground, Prairie Fire (1974)

The long-standing liberal asssumption that the rise of modern society and the decay of religion were two sides of the same coin was suddenly thrown into doubt.

In the 1980s terror was still the business of a handful of radical revolutionaries and some all-too-familiar nationalists. The next ten years, however, saw a remarkable shift. One of the leading surveys in the late 1990s asserted that ‘the religious imperative for terrorism is the most important defining characteristic of terrorism today��

jihad is often presented as an inbuilt incitement to violence. But the standard translation, ‘holy war��, maybe misleading (the tag ‘holy�� is certainly a Western addition for the reasons we have just seen), since jihad literally means ‘striving��, and might better be rendered as ‘struggle��.
Some modern Muslims hold that it refers to spiritual struggle, or at most to defensive rather than aggressive war, but fundamentalists certainly do not accept this. But if it is, as they maintain, a religious obligation to maintain a state of war with those outside the community of Islam, can terrorism properly understood fulfil this function?

‘Most people will sacrifice their freedom for security if they feel threatened enough.��