From the Publisher
For four years, Jessica Stern interviewed extremist members of three religions around the world: Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Traveling 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 fervor is transformed into sophisticated organizations that strive for money, power, and attention.
Jessica Stern's extensive interaction with the faces behind the terror provide unprecedented insight into acts of inexplicable horror, and enable 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.
The New York Times
A leading expert on terrorism and a lecturer at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, [Stern] has tracked down and interviewed an impressive range of activists in a variety of causes from Florida to Kashmir. On a subject that tends to be richer in rhetoric than in detail, a writer able and willing to get this close is hard to find … As a description of the problem, though, this is a serious and provocative beginning.
— Isabel Hilton
The Washington Post
Stern is the think-tank world's Bond girl, a rare female expert on terrorism and weapons of mass destruction; she was the inspiration for the Nicole Kidman character in "The Peacemaker." Her previous book, The Ultimate Terrorists, dissected the probability that terrorists would launch a nuclear or chemical attack, complete with psychological studies and policy suggestions. This latest one is the follow-up field trip, low on theory, high on anecdote: The professor comes face to face with her subjects.
— Hanna Rosin
The New Yorker
This sophisticated examination of religiously motivated terrorism is a welcome antidote to the armchair analyses of Islamic extremism that surfaced in the wake of September 11th. Stern spent five years interviewing religious terrorists of all stripes, including anti-abortion crusaders, Hamas leaders, and militants in Pakistan and Indonesia. She found men and women who were driven not by nihilistic rage or lunacy but by a deep faith in the justice of their causes and in the possibility of transforming the world through violence. That faith, Stern suggests, is fuelled by poverty, repression, and a sense of humiliation, and then exploited by “inspirational leaders” who turn confused people into killers. The West cannot fight terror by intelligence and military means alone, she argues; a “smarter realpolitik approach” toward the developing world would use policy to deprive terrorists of not only funding and weapons but potential recruits.
Publishers Weekly
Stern, a former fellow on terrorism at the Council on Foreign Relations (and the inspiration for Nicole Kidman's character in The Peacemaker), makes the issue personal by depicting her encounters with religious terrorists around the world. Her definition of "religious terrorism" is comprehensive, encompassing the growing Muslim jihad in Indonesia, militant Palestinians and zealous Israelis, and Americans who kill abortion doctors in the name of Christ. Given the opportunity to articulate their positions, these and other subjects surprise not by their vehemence but by their relative normality, making it all the more curious that many of them eventually elect to strike against their opponents with deadly force. Explaining the "how" therefore becomes as important as explaining the "why," and the book carefully outlines the ways in which militant leaders of all denominations find recruits among the disenfranchised and recondition them, often under cultlike conditions, stoking their zealotry to the point of suicide and murder. Coupled with additional research, Stern's firsthand encounters bring a valuable and much-needed perspective to the problem of religious violence, and she identifies several increasingly broad threats, including the extent to which many governments will tolerate or even sponsor militant religious groups to further their own political agendas. For all the material damage terrorist acts cause, Stern argues, we should understand religious militance as a form of psychological warfare, calculated to bolster the faithful and strike "spiritual dread" in the unbelievers; the most effective counterstrategy is thus not violence but nonviolent techniques such as psychological counterwarfare and the reaffimation of our own values. (Aug. 19) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Foreign Affairs
Stern, who has devoted years of study to her subject, strings together accounts of her many interviews with terrorists and former terrorists in a very readable book that treats mainly Muslims but gives careful attention to Christian and Jewish terrorists as well. The style is that of a personal odyssey, in search of the roots of religious militancy. She skips often from specific to general and from one country or religion to another, relating her own concerns and working hypotheses while weaving into the narrative many insights from studies in disciplines as diverse as psychology and history. The first part sets out five categories of grievances that move people to embrace terrorism (alienation, humiliation, demographics, history, and territory). The second treats the different patterns of terrorist organization; she considers charismatic leaders, lone-wolf avengers, and commanders and their cadres, as well as the "ultimate organization" that takes advantage of all of the above, al Qaeda being the classic example. After sifting the many different motives that impel people to terrorism and the different modalities of terrorists in action, she concludes with "policy recommendations" that amount to no quick fix but are sensible steps, appropriate to the harsh reality that she has so effectively illuminated.
Library Journal
A lecturer at Harvard's Kennedy School of Public Policy, Stern spent four years talking to terrorists of all stripes to determine that recent terrorist organizations have been preempted by opportunists. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Anybody who thinks Eric Robert Rudolph has nothing in common with Osama bin Laden needs to spend time with Terror in the Name of God. Stern, a former terrorism specialist at the National Security Council and the Council on Foreign Relations, now teaches a course on terrorism at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. But it’s her willingness to present herself in the tent—or, more often, the cell—of some of the world’s most feared and reviled killers that confers authenticity. The author spent five years interviewing Christian, Jewish, and Muslim extremists in sites ranging from a Texas trailer park to Pakistani prisons reserved for those who have achieved Hannibal Lecter status. And when a Jewish woman asks a Hamas leader face to face why he does it, the result is definitely a Silence of the Lambs moment, only more chilling. Are they deranged? Most, says Stern, are probably not, but they have been conditioned, even transformed, into people whose "dual killer self" carries the holy conviction that the world can be made better, and God’s will be done, through terror and murder. Root cause? Not one, the author asserts, but a typical complex of repression, poverty, and alienation, often acting in concert with a desire to simplify one’s life in a hopelessly complicated world. In the case of the Palestinians, she notes, "It is not just the violence; it is the pernicious effect of repeated humiliations that add up to a feeling of nearly unbearable despair." Stern’s supporting details have their own fascination: for instance, Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers are probably the world’s best organized modern terrorist group, having killed more people by thousands (including two heads of state)than any other. She also correlates the rise of terrorism in Indonesia, culminating in the recent Bali bombing, directly with its 1997 financial crisis. Emphatic case for understanding terrorists in order to defeat them.
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