Comment by diggan
> if you (try to) use violence against civilians for political/ideological/religious motives
A person driving over a person with a van with explicit goal of "Jihad against Christians" would be terrorism, because of the objective, no matter how many people get hurt.
While it seems clear to me that this can be considered "terrorism", it would also seem like it isn't breaking against "anti-terrorism laws" or whatever the charge is in the US.
The jihad driver chooses usually a person at random. If it ran over some army general who led an attack in Iraq would it still be terrorism? Because that's the difference here.