What counts as a terrorist attack?

Apparently if you’re Muslim, that’s now enough evidence for even the staid and cautious New York Times:

The toll of a terrorist attack on a Bastille Day fireworks celebration in the southern French city of Nice rose on Friday to 84 dead and 202 injured, as the government identified the attacker as a 31-year-old native of Tunisia, extended a national state of emergency and absorbed the shock of a third major terrorist attack in 19 months.

“We will not give in to the terrorist threat,” Prime Minister Manuel Valls said Friday morning after a cabinet meeting led by President François Hollande. “The times have changed, and France is going to have to live with terrorism.” . . .,

Mr. Bouhlel had a history of petty crime, including burglary and theft, and received a six-month suspended sentence in March for assaulting a motorist during an altercation. “He is totally unknown to the intelligence services, both locally and nationally,” Mr. Molins said, and he had never appeared in any terrorism-related government database. [emphasis supplied]

French television station BFM TV reported that he was a divorced father-of-three who had become depressed following the breakdown of his marriage. . .

Neighbours described Bouhel as a depressed – sometimes aggressive – man who was not particularly interested in religion, and kept to himself.

They said that he had been unhappy since he divorced his wife two years ago, and that he suffered from financial problems.

Those who lived near him said he had been “depressed and unstable, even aggressive” of late. They put this down to his “marital and financial problems”.

One told BFM TV he was “more into women than religion”.

“He (didn’t) pray and like(d) girls and Salsa,” according to BFM’s crime correspondent.

One 40-year-old neighbour, who would only give her first name Jasmine, said: “He was rude and bit weird.

“We would hold the door open for him and he would just blank [us]. He kept himself to himself but would always rant about his wife. He had marital problems and would tell people in the local cafe. He scared my children though.”

Of course it’s possible that this will end up being terrorism-related, but at this point the evidence for that “fact” seems to consist of the killer’s name.