ISBN: 9780060505332    Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Inc Year of publishing: 2004     Format:  Paperback No of Pages: 400        

For four years, Jessica Stern interviewed extremist members of three religions around the world: Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Travelling extensively - to refugee camps in Lebanon, to religious schools in Pakistan, to prisons in Amman, Asqelon, and Pensacola - she discovered that the Islamic jihadi in the mountains of Pakistan and the Christian fundamentalist bomber in Oklahoma have much in common. Based on her vast research, Stern lucidly explains how terrorist organizations are formed by opportunistic leaders who - using religion as both motivation and justification - recruit the disenfranchised. She depicts how moral fervour is transformed into sophisticated organizations that strive for money, power, and attention. Jessica Stern's extensive interaction with the faces behind the terror provides unprecedented insight into acts of inexplicable horror, and enables her to suggest how terrorism can most effectively be countered. A crucial book on terrorism, Terror in the Name of God is a brilliant and thought-provoking work.
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Jessica Stern, the foremost U.S. expert on terrorism, is a lecturer at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and a faculty affiliate of the Belfer Centre for Science and International Affairs. From 1994 to 1995, she served as director for Russian, Ukrainian, and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council; from 1998 to 1999, she was the Super terrorism Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and from 1995 to 1996, she was a National Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. She lives in Cambridge, MA.
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