Using India as a case study, Joseph McQuade traces the genealogy of the political and legal category of terrorism. He demonstrates how the modern concept of terrorism was shaped by colonial emergency laws dating back into the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

First published in English in 2007 under title: The history of terrorism: from antiquity to al Qaeda.

On January 18, 1984, Malcolm Kerr, president of the American University of Beirut and a respected scholar of Middle East politics was shot dead. This book is a portrait of the intimate way in which violence pulls lives apart, of an American family caught on the stage of Middle East politics and of the moral choices required in seeking justice.

"Is terrorism crime or war? Can there be a 'war against terrorism'? In this fully updated edition, Charles Townshend unravels the questions at the heart of the problem of terrorism - its causes, methods, effects, and limitations - suggesting that it must be understood as a political strategy whose threat can be rationally grasped and answered"--Publisher's description.

"Papers from a conference held at Bowling Green State University in the fall of 1988" -- T.p. verso.

In the first two decades of the twenty-first century, the events of 9/11, 7/7, the War on Terror and the Caliphate and atrocities of the so-called Islamic State have dominated Western consciousness and wreaked havoc in parts of the Muslim-majority world. In their wake, a spate of books has been written explaining the phenomenon of Islamist radicalisation and Jihadism. Nevertheless, for normal citizens, as well as scholars of religion and legal professionals, the crucial question remains unanswered: how is mainstream Islam different from both Islamism and the Islamist Extremism that is used to justify terrorist violence? In this highly original book, which draws upon the author's experience as an expert witness in Islamic theology in 27 counter-terrorism trials, the author uses the idea of the Worldview, as well as traditional Islamic theology, to answer this question. The book explains not only what Mainstream Islam, Ideological Islamism and Islamist Extremism are in their broad philosophical characteristics and theological particulars, but also explains comprehensively how and why they are both superficially related and yet essentially and fundamentally different. In so doing, the book also illuminates the cast of characters and the development of their ideas that constitute Mainstream Islam, Ideological Islamism and the Non-Violent and Violent Islamist Extremists who constitute the Genealogy of Terror.

Publisher description