The urgent necessity of understanding exactly how contemporary terrorism is motivated by monotheism is the focus of this important collection. The topic requires conceptual clarification, doctrinal precision and historical attention to the interplay between doctrine and political and cultural circumstances. These essays, taken individually and as a whole, get the mix of these tasks just right, and the result is an important and readable contribution to the discussion. Required reading-not only for policy makers dealing with security concerns, but also for all the religiously serious descendants of Abraham.

Joseph Boyle, St. Michael's College

This is a fine collection of essays that takes seriously the religious beliefs that percolate beneath the purveyors of global terrorism. But it does so with a level of sophistication, careful scholarship, and respectful analysis that is rarely found among scholars and activists who often write and opine on this subject.

Francis J. Beckwith, Baylor University