Dying for Faith: Religiously Motivated Violence in the Contemporary World [Paperback]

From India to Iraq, from London to Lahore, the relationship between religion and violence is one of the most bitterly contested and casually misrepresented issues of our times. This groundbreaking volume brings together expert perspectives from a variety of fields to probe it. It seeks to shift analytical focus on to the contexts in which violence is expressed, enacted and reported. Ranging from Islam to Buddhism to new religious movements in the West, Dying for Faith offers a comprehensive and highly original account of a complex phenomenon that has so far attracted sensational media coverage but scant academic attention.Madawi Al-Rasheed is Professor of Anthropology of Religion at King's College London. Marat Shterin is a Lectuer in Theology and Religious Studies at King's College, London.

Acknowledgements
Contributors
Foreign words

Introduction
Madawi Al-Rasheed and Marat Shterin, Between death of faith and dying for faith: reflections on religion, politics, society and violence

Part I: Understanding religiously motivated violence

Chapter 1Apocalypse, history, and the empire of modernity
John Hall
Chapter 2Martyrs and martial imagery: exploring the volatile link between warfare frames and religious violence
Stuart Wright
Chapter 3Violence and new religions: an assessment of problems, progress, and prospects in understanding the NRM-violence connection
J. Gordon Melton and David G. Bromley
Chapter 4Of 'cultists' and 'martyrs': the study of new religious movements and suicide terrorism in conversation
Massimo Introvigne
Chapter 5In God's name: practising unconditional love to the death
Eileen Barker
Chapter 6The terror of belief and the belief in terror: on violently serving God and nation
Abdelwahhab El-Affendi

Part II: Religiously motivated violence in specific contexts

Chapter 7Rituals of life and death: the politics and poetics of jihad in Saudi Arabia
Madawi Al-Rasheed
Chaptlƒœ