The head of BBC Arabic has advised his staff not to label anyone, or any act, as “terrorist”. So, Said Kouachi: not a terrorist. Boko Haram: not a group of terrorists. 9/11: not a terrorist atrocity. The term is “too loaded”, says the BBC’s Tarik Kafala, who prefers to call a bombing a bombing, a massacre a massacre, and a plane flying into a tower… an ideologically motivated attack, I suppose.

There are complications here, to be sure, but isn’t the most immediate reaction one of relief? With a small shift in editorial policy, it would seem the BBC has done more to “eradicate terrorism” than 14 years of war put together. You can say that, I think, without being utterly facetious.

The world won’t be safer in a literal sense, of course; Isis and al-Qaeda will butcher regardless of the term a BBC newsroom applies. But, minus the “terrorism” tag, the threat from groups like these feels somehow less monstrous, more manageable. Tally up the achievements of the “war on terror” since 9/11, meanwhile, and you get… not a great deal. In the failures column must go a fivefold increase in deaths from terrorism, according to the latest survey from the Global Terrorism Index.

One doubt: does the refusal to say “terrorism” offer a false sense of security? No. If anything, Western citizens vastly overestimate the scale of the threat. A Briton, thankfully, has about as much chance of dying in a suicide bombing as they do through slipping on a banana skin. Lose the word “terrorism” and it might help us find some perspective, in fact.

Another doubt: is it a form of self-censorship, or a shirking of the journalist’s duty to call things how they are? Again, no. The UN has struggled to agree on a hard and fast definition for “terrorism” for more than a decade. The key ingredients include death and destruction, outside the rules of international law and for a political purpose. But that remains broad, and in practice, most people go with a variant of: “I know it when I see it.”

Which means that attacks carried out by non-Muslims often slip out of the “terrorism” picture: after the Charlie Hebdo killings, a former director of the CIA tweeted that this was the “worst” attack in Europe since the 2005 London bombings. He had either forgotten that Anders Breivik murdered 77 people in Norway, or didn’t associate white men with primeval scaremongering.

Two more points. We don’t report on murderers as “avengers”, even though revenge might have guided their hand. Why, then, support groups that aim to sow terror by including that term in their title? If you weren’t terrified enough by, say, the Boston bombings, to see that word flashed across television after television after newspaper might easily have finished the job.

The rise of Boko Haram Show all 20 1 /20 The rise of Boko Haram The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram The leader of the Islamist extremist group Boko Haram Abubakar Shekau delivers a message. Boko Haram has claimed responsibility for the mass killings in the north-east Nigerian town of Baga in a video where he warned the massacre “was just the tip of the iceberg”. As many as 2,000 civilians were killed and 3,700 homes and business were destroyed in the 3 January 2015 attack on the town near Nigeria's border with Cameroon AFP The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram People displaced as a result of Boko Haram attacks in the northeast region of Nigeria, are seen near their tents at a faith-based camp for internally displaced people (IDP) in Yola, Adamawa State. Boko Haram says it is building an Islamic state that will revive the glory days of northern Nigeria's medieval Muslim empires, but for those in its territory life is a litany of killings, kidnappings, hunger and economic collapse The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram Nitsch Eberhard Robert, a German citizen abducted and held hostage by suspected Boko Haram militants, is seen as he arrives at the Yaounde Nsimalen International airport after his release in Yaounde, Cameroon on 21 January 2015 The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram Officials of the Nigerian National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) visit victims of a bomb blast in Gombe at the Specialist Hospital in Gombe. According to local reports at least six people were killed and 11 wounded after a bomb blast in a marketplace in Nigeria's northeastern state of Gombe on 16 January 2015. Islamist militant group Boko Haram has been blamed for a string of recent attacks in the North East of Nigeria The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram People gather at the site of a bomb explosion in a area know to be targeted by the militant group Boko Haram in Kano on 28 November 2014 The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram People gather to look at a burnt vehicle following a bomb explosion that rocked the busiest roundabout near the crowded Market in Maiduguri, Borno State on 1 July 2014. A truck exploded in a huge fireball killing at least 15 people in the northeast Nigerian city of Maiduguri, the city repeatedly hit by Boko Haram Islamists The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram President Goodluck Jonathan visits Nigerian Army soldiers fighting Boko Haram Getty Images The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram Displaced people from Baga listen to Goodluck Jonathan after the Boko Haram killings AFP/Getty The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram Nigeria's President Goodluck Jonathan speaking to troops during a visit to Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State; most of the region has been overrun by Boko Haram AFP/Getty The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram Members of the Nigerian military patrolling in Maiduguri, North East Nigeria, close to the scene of attacks by Boko Haram EPA The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram Boko Haram’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, appears in a video in which he warns Cameroon it faces the same fate as Nigeria AFP The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram Nana Shettima, the wife of Borno Governor, Kashim Shettima (C) weeps as she speaks with school girls from the government secondary school Chibok that were kidnapped by the Islamic extremist group Boko Haram, and later escaped in Chibok The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram South Africans protest in solidarity against the abduction of hundreds of schoolgirls in Nigeria by the Muslim extremist group Boko Haram and what protesters said was the failure of the Nigerian government and international community to rescue them, during a march to the Nigerian Consulate in Johannesburg The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram Boko Haram militants have seized the town in north-eastern Nigeria that nearly 300 schoolgirls were kidnapped from in April 2014 AFP The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram A soldier stands guard in front of burnt buses after an attack in Abuja. Twin blasts at a bus station packed with morning commuters on the outskirts of Nigeria's capital killed dozens of people, in what appeared to be the latest attack by Boko Haram Islamists, April 2014 The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram The aftermath of the attack, when Boko Haram fighters in trucks painted in military colours killed 51 people in Konduga in February 2014 AFP/Getty Images The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram The leader of Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau (with papers) in a video grab taken in July 2014 AFP/Getty The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram Ruins of burnt out houses in the north-eastern settlement of Baga, pictured after Boko Haram attacks in 2013 AP The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram A Boko Haram attack in Nigeria, 2013 AFP/Getty Images The rise of Boko Haram Boko Haram Abubakar Shekau, Boko Haram’s leader AP