Terrorist's Creed Fanatical Violence and the Human Need for Meaning [Hardcover]

Terrorist's Creed casts a penetrating beam of empathetic understanding into the disturbing and murky psychological world of fanatical violence, explaining how the fanaticism it demands stems from the profoundly human need to imbue existence with meaning and transcendence.Acknowledgments Introduction: The Liquid Fear of Terrorism Terrorism as Zealotry: Defending the Nomos Modernist Terrorism: Creating the Nomos The Metapolitics of Terrorism in Fiction The Metapolitics of Terrorist Radicalization Modern Zealots of the Sacred Homeland Modernist Terrorism Red, Black, and White The Hybrid Metapolitics of Religious Terrorism Islamism's Global War against Nomocide Afterthoughts on the Nature of Terrorism Endnotes Index

'...a nuanced analysis that is at once philosophical, psychological, political and historical...Griffin's work makes an important contribution to the field.' -Christina Hellmich, University of Reading, Times Higher Education

'...an original, insightful, and innovative contribution to the literature on terrorism'

- Jeffrey M. Bale, Monterey Institute of International Studies

'...among the most original and sweeping theoretical works to come from the terrorism studies genre in the last decade.'

- Jeffrey B. Cozzens, White Mountain Research LLC

'It is rare to find a work of such originality in a field like terrorism studies, which is dominated either by journalistic cliches or a crudely logistical analysis. Griffin locates terrorism in a richly conceived context that is ethical and epistemological as much as it is political.'

- Dr. Faisal Devji, University of Oxford

'In an analysis that is at once philosophical, psychological, political, and historical, Roger Griffin brings to the study of modern terrorism the same breadth of knowledge, aquaintance with specialized literature, and empathic insight he brought to his study of ModerlG