Terror in the Mind of God - The Global Rise of Religious Violence

Juergensmeyer, Mark

ISBN 10: 0520223012 / ISBN 13: 9780520223011

Published by First edition, published by University of California Press, Berkeley, 2000., 2000

About this Item

Near fine with near fine dust jacket. Book and dust jacket are bumped at top of spine. Dust jacket is also lightly bumped at top edges. 316 pages with index and bibliography plus sixteen photographs.

Seller Inventory # 12997

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Terror in the Mind of God - The Global Rise of Religious Violence
• Publisher: First edition, published by University of California Press, Berkeley, 2000.
• Publication Date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0520223012
• ISBN 13: 9780520223011
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • Religion
  • Political Science

About this title

Synopsis

Beneath the histories of religious traditions--from biblical wars to crusading ventures and great acts of martyrdom--violence has lurked as a shadowy presence. Images of death have never been far from the heart of religion's power to stir the imagination. 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. Incorporating 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

About the Author

Mark Juergensmeyer is Professor of Sociology and Director of Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of The New Cold War? Religious Nationalism Confronts the Secular State (California, 1993), Radhasoami Reality: The Logic of a Modern Faith (1991), and editor of Violence and the Sacred in the Modern World (1992).