MACMILLAN Sacred Violence: Political Religion in a Secular Age (Rethinking Political Violence)

Sacred Violence and Religious Violence examines the place that ideology or political religion plays in legitimizing violence to bring about a purer world. In particular, the book examines Islamism and the western secular, liberal democratic responses to it. Review 'A devastating exposé of how progressive Utopian ideologies have turned international critical theory into a source of legitimacy for enemies of Western values and in particular - violent Islam.' - Ruth Dudley Edwards, Journalist, UK 'This is an erudite, incisive and combative book. The two authors take on the Big Question of how best to understand the origins of religiously justified terror as basis for effective response. They believe that that this is widely and systematically misunderstood. Their argument indicts a pernicious thicket of intertwined errors: the euphemisms of mainstream political discourse, the compulsive utopian anti-occidentalism of 'critical scholarship ', the evasions of Islamist apologists, and even the cultural despair of post 9/11 Anglophone novelists [...] Sacred Violence is deliberately provocative. The responses of those who will most dislike it should be instructive.' - Paul Schulte, Honorary Professor, Institute for Conflict, Cooperation and Security, Birmingham University, UK,and Non-Resident Senior Associate of the Nuclear Policy Programme of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace About the Author David Martin Jones is Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Queensland, Australia. M.L.R. Smith is Professor of Strategic Studies, King's College London, UK.