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List of contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Why Another Book on Jihadism?
Part I
1 René Girard’s Mimetic Theory
2 Violence in Modernity
Part II
3 The Islamic Modernity
4 The Militant Jihadist Response to Modernity
5 The Rise of Violent Jihad
6 Jihadism and Violence
7 Violence and Identity
8 Sacred Jihadist Totalitarianism
Part III
9 Why Is God Part of Human Violence? The Idolatrous Nature of Militant Jihadism
10 The Sacred and the Holy: Alternatives to Escalating Violence
Appendix: René Girard at a Glance, Scott Cowdell, Chris Fleming, and Joel Hodge
Glossary of Key Girardian Terms, Scott Cowdell, Chris Fleming, and Joel Hodge
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Joel Hodge is Senior Lecturer in Systematic Theology at Australian Catholic University, Australia. He is the author of Resisting Violence and Victimisation: Christian Faith and Solidarity in East Timor (2012) and co-editor of the series, Violence, Desire, and the Sacred.
Summary
This book traces the trajectory of militant jihadism to show how violence is more intentionally embraced as the centre of worship, social order and ideology.
Undertaking an in-depth analysis of militant jihadist groups and utilising the work of René Girard, Joel Hodge argues that the extreme violence of militant jihadists is a response to modernity in two ways that have not been sufficiently explored by the existing literature. Firstly, it is a manifestation of the unrestrained and escalating state of desire and rivalry in modernity, which militant jihadists seek to counter with extreme violence. Secondly, it is a response to the unveiling and discrediting of sacred violence, which militant jihadists seek to reverse by more purposefully valorising sacred violence in what they believe to be jihad.
Relevant to anyone interested in Islam, philosophy of religion, theology, and terrorism, Violence in the Name of God imagines new ways of thinking about militancy in the name of Islam in the twenty-first century.
Foreword
Focusses on understanding religious violence in the form of terrorism and Islamic extremism, using the insights of René Girard, the premier theorist of violence
Additional text
To understand Jihad—its origins, spread, dynamics, methods, aims, and prospects—from a position of powerful practical and theoretical insight, Hodge’s bold yet measured study provides a reliable and accessible guide...Hodge ends his comprehensive, clear-eyed, unsentimental assessment with a summons to the better angels of our nature.
