The essence of the activity-the use of, or threat to use, violence . In the absence of a political aim, the activity in questwill not be defined as terrorism. A violent activity against civilians that has no political aim is, at most, an act of criminal delinquency, a felony, or simply an act of insanity unrelated to terrorism.
Some scholars tend to add ideological or religious aims to the list of political aims.
The advantage of this definition, however, is that it is as short and exhaustive as possible. The concept of 'political aim' is sufficiently broad to include these goals as well. Most analysts fail to recognize this and, hence, tend to discuss certain motives as logical or necessary aspects of terrorism. But they are not. At best, they are empirical regularities associated with terrorism.