Madawi Al-Rasheed is Professor of Anthropology of Religion at King's College London. Marat Shterin is a Lectuer in Theology and Religious Studies at King's College, London.

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• Introduction: Between death of faith and dying for faith: reflections on religion, politics, society and violence, Madawi Al-Rasheed and Marat Shterin; Part I: Understanding religiously motivated violence; 1. Apocalypse, history, and the empire of modernity, John Hall; 2. Martyrs and martial imagery: exploring the volatile link between warfare frames and religious violence,Stuart Wright; 3. Violence and new religions: an assessment of problems, progress, and prospects in understanding the NRM-violence connection, J. Gordon Melton and David G. Bromley; 4. Of cultists and martyrs: the study of new religious movements and suicide terrorism in conversation, Massimo Introvigne; 5. In God's name: practising unconditional love to the death, Eileen Barker; 6. The terror of belief and the belief in terror: on violently serving God and nation, Abdelwahhab El-Affendi. Part II: Religiously motivated violence in specific contexts; 7. Rituals of life and death: the politics and poetics of jihad in Saudi Arabia, Madawi Al-Rasheed; 8. The Islamic debate over self-inflicted martyrdom, Azam Tamimi; 9. The radical nineties revisited: jihadi discourses in Britain, Jonathan Birt; 10. al-Shahada: a centre of the Shiite system of belief, Fouad Ibrahim; 11. Urban unrest and non-religious radicalization in Saudi Arabia, Pascal Manoret and Awadh al-Utaybi; 12. Bodily punishments and the spiritually transcendent dimensions of violence: a Zen Buddhist example, Ian Reader; 13. Jewish millennialism and violence, Simon Dein. Part III: Reporting religiously motivated violence; 14. Sacral violence: cosmologies and imaginaries of killing, Neil Whitehead; 15. Journalists as eyewitnesses, Noha Mellor; 16. Understanding religious violence: can the media be trusted to explain?, Mark Huband. Index