Bruce Lawrence's Review of "Dying for Heaven"

Bruce Lawrence, professor of religion and director of Islamic Studies at Duke and author of Shattering the Myth: Islam Beyond Violence and New Faiths, Old Fears: Muslims and Other Asian Immigrants in American Religious Life, reviews Ariel Glucklish's new book Dying for Heaven: Holy Pleasure and Suicide Bombers–Why the Best Qualities of Religion Are Also its Most Dangerous at Religion Dispatches.

A new work advancing a radical theory of the motivation behind suicide bombers is almost bizarrely off the mark. Stitching together thought and observation from disparate and often dissonant sources, Georgetown theology professor Ariel Glucklich's book would be laughable were he not a consultant to the defense community.

Dying for Heaven makes a mockery of both religion and death, transforming holy pleasure into a dirge of contradiction and Islamophobia. No laughing matter, it should be treated as a symptom rather than a solution to American (dis)engagement with Islam and Muslims.

Interestingly, I just saw on the Amazon page that this book carries blurbs from Ahmad Rashid and Carl Ernst...

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