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Smith reviews Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence by Mark Juergensmeyer.

Since September 11, 2001, we all need tools to help us understand what motivates religious terrorism. In this wide-ranging and erudite book, Mark Juergensmeyer asks one of the most important and perplexing questions of our age: Why do religious people commit violent acts in the name of their god, taking the lives of innocent victims and terrorizing entire populations? This, the first comparative study of religious terrorism, explores incidents such as the World Trade Center explosion, Hamas suicide bombings, the Tokyo subway nerve gas attack, and the killing of abortion clinic doctors in the United States. Updated with a new preface addressing the events of September 11, the book incorporates personal interviews with World Trade Center bomber Mahmud Abouhalima, Christian Right activist Mike Bray, Hamas leaders Sheik Yassin and Abdul Azis Rantisi, and Sikh political leader Simranjit Singh Mann, among others, Juergensmeyer takes us into the mindset of those who perpetrate and support violent acts. In the process, he helps us understand why these acts are often associated with religious causes and why they occur with such frequency at this moment in history. Terror in the Mind of God places these acts of violence in the context of global political and social changes, and posits them as attempts to empower the cultures of violence that support them. Juergensmeyer analyzes the economic, ideological, and gender-related dimensions of cultures that embrace a central sacred concept--cosmic war--and that employ religion to demonize their enemies. Juergensmeyer's narrative is engaging, incisive, and sweeping in scope. He convincingly shows that while, in many cases, religion supplies not only the ideology but also the motivation and organizational structure for the perpetrators of violent acts, it also carries with it the possibilities for peace. Los Angeles Times Best Nonfiction Book of 2000

"Much like our world today, Late Antiquity (fourth-seventh centuries CE) is often seen as a period rife with religious violence, not least because the literary sources are full of stories of Christians attacking temples, statues and 'pagans'. However, using insights from Religious Studies, recent studies have demonstrated that the Late Antique sources disguise a much more intricate reality. The present volume builds on this recent cutting-edge scholarship on religious violence in Late Antiquity in order to come to more nuanced judgments about the nature of the violence. At the same time, the focus on Late Antiquity has taken away from the fact that the phenomenon was no less prevalent in the earlier Graeco-Roman world. This book is therefore the first to bring together scholars with expertise ranging from classical Athens to Late Antiquity to examine the phenomenon in all its complexity and diversity throughout Antiquity. JITSE H.F. DIJKSTRA is Professor of Classics at the University of Ottawa. His research centres on the process of religious transformation in Late Antiquity, in particular in its Egyptian context. He is the author of numerous studies on the subject, including the monograph Philae and the End of Ancient Egyptian Religion. A Regional Study of Religious Transformation (298-642 CE) (2008). CHRISTIAN R. RASCHLE is Associate Professor of Roman History at the Université de Montréal. He specializes in the history of the administration and political system of the Roman Empire, especially the reorganization of its provinces in Late Antiquity, and themes in the cultural history of the first century CE (Lucan)"--