Established in Peru in 1570, the Holy Office of the Inquisition operated there until 1820, prosecuting, torturing, and sentencing alleged heretics. Ana Schaposchnik offers a deeply researched history of the Inquisition's tribunal in the capital city of Lima, with a focus on cases of crypto-Judaism-the secret adherence to Judaism while publicly professing Christianity. Delving into the records of the tribunal, Schaposchnik brings to light the experiences of individuals on both sides of the process. Some prisoners, she discovers, developed a limited degree of agency as they managed to stall trials or mitigate the most extreme punishments. Training her attention on the accusers, Schaposchnik uncovers the agendas of specific inquisitors in bringing the condemned from the dungeons to the 1639 Auto General de Fe ceremony of public penance and execution. Through this fine-grained study of the tribunal's participants, Schaposchnik finds that the Inquisition sought to discipline and shape culture not so much through frequency of trials or number of sentences as through the potency of individual examples.

Fawaz Gerges book on al Qaeda and the jihadist movement has become a classic in the field since it was published in 2005. Here he argued that far from being an Islamist front united in armed struggle, or jihad against the Christian West, as many misguided political commentators and politicians opined, al Qaeda represented a small faction within the jihadist movement, criticized by other groups who preferred to concentrate on changing the Muslim world, rather than attacking the Far Enemy and making the fight global. In the intervening years, with the advance of the War on Terror and the invasion of Iraq, much has changed and, just as Gerges showed, al Qaeda s fortunes have taken a significant downturn. Revisiting The Far Enemy in this new edition, Gerges demonstrates that not only have the jihadists split ranks, but that voices from within the ultra-religious right, those that previously supported al Qaeda, are condemning its tactics as violent, unethical, and out of accord with the true meaning of jihad. In fact, millions of Muslims worldwide have rejected al-Qaeda s ideology and strategies and blame Osama bin Laden and his cohorts for the havoc the organisation has wrecked on their communities. Al-Qaeda is now in the wilderness suffering massive erosion of authority and legitimacy in Muslim eyes and facing a fierce revolt from within. As Gerges warns, the next US administration would do well to use political and socio-economic strategies rather than military means to ensure that it stays there.

This polemic against Islamic extremism highlights the striking parallels between contemporary Islamism and the 20th-century fascism embodied by Hitler and Mussolini. Like those infamous ideologies, Islamism today touts imperialist dreams of world domination, belief in its inherent superiority, contempt for the rest of humanity, and often a murderous agenda. The author, born and raised in Egypt and now living in Germany, not only explains the historical connections between early 20th-century fascist movements in Europe and extremist factions in Islam, but he also traces the fascist tendencies in mainstream Islam that have existed throughout its history. Examining key individuals and episodes from centuries past, the book shows the influence of Islam's earliest exploits on current politics in the Islamic world. The author's incisive analysis exposes the fascist underpinnings of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Shia regime in Iran, ISIS, Salafi and Jihadist ideologies, and more. Forcefully argued and well-researched, this book grew out of a lecture on Islamic fascism that the author gave in Cairo, resulting in a call for his death by three prominent Egyptian clerics.

While there exists no evidence to date that the indigenous inhabitants of Arabia knew of holy war prior to Islam, holy war ideas and behaviours appear already among Muslims during the first generation. Reuven Firestone focuses on why and how such a seemingly radical development took place. Basing his hypothesis on evidence from the Qur'an and early Islamic literary sources, Firestone locates the origin of Islamic holy war and traces its evolution as a response to the changes affecting the new community of Muslims in its transition from ancient Arabian culture to the religious civilization of Islam.

For Christians living as a persecuted minority in the Middle East, the question of whether their allegiance should lie with their faith or with the national communities they live in is a difficult one. This collection of essays aims to reconcile this conflict of allegiance by looking at the biblical vision of citizenship and showing that Christians can live and work as citizens of the state without compromising their beliefs and make a constructive contribution to the life of the countries they live in. The contributors come from a range of prestigious academic and religious posts and provide analysis on a range of issues such as dual nationalism, patriotism and the increase of Islamic fundamentalism. An insightful look into the challenges religious minorities face in countries where they are a minority, these essays provide a peace-building and reconciliatory conclusion for readers to consider.

'Wonderfully written and characteristically brilliant' Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads 'Elegant, readable ... an impressive synthesis ... Not many historians could have done it' - Jonathan Sumption, Spectator 'Tyerman's book is fascinating not just for what it has to tell us about the Crusades, but for the mirror it holds up to today's religious extremism' - Tom Holland, Spectator Thousands left their homelands in the Middle Ages to fight wars abroad. But how did the Crusades actually happen? From recruitment propaganda to raising money, ships to siege engines, medicine to the power of prayer, this vivid, surprising history shows holy war - and medieval society - in a new light.

The Templars' and Hospitallers' daily business of recruitment, fund-raising, farming, shipping and communal life explored alongside their commitment to crusading. The military and religious orders of the Knights Templar (founded 1120) and Knights Hospitaller (founded c.1099) were a driving force throughout the long history of the crusades. This study examines the work of the two orders closely, using original charters to analyse their activities in their administrative heartland in south-west France, and sets them in the context of contemporary religious life and economic organisation. Recruitment, fund-raising, farming, shipping, and communal life are all touched upon, and the orders' commitment to crusading through control and supply of manpower, money, arms and supplies is assessed. Dr Selwood shows the orders at the centre of religious life in Occitania, highlighting their success compared with other new orders such as the Cistercians, and looking at their relationships with the secular and monastic Church. Other themes addressed include the orders' relationshipto Occitanian society and to the laiety, their involvement with pilgrimage to Jerusalem, their innovative administrative structures, and their logistical operations. DOMINIC SELWOOD gained his Ph.D. at Oxford; he is now a barrister at Lincoln's Inn, and practices from chambers in the Inner Temple.

State sponsorship of terrorism is a complex and important topic in today's international affairs - and especially pertinent in the regional politics of the Middle East and South Asia, where Pakistan has long been a flashpoint of Islamist politics and terrorism. In Islamism and Intelligence in South Asia, Prem Mahadevan demonstrates how over several decades, radical Islamists, sometimes with the tacit support of parts of the military establishment, have weakened democratic governance in Pakistan and acquired progressively larger influence over policy-making. Mahadevan traces this history back to the anti-colonial Deobandi movement, which was born out of the post-partition political atmosphere and a rediscovery of the thinking of Ibn Taymiyyah, and partially ennobled the idea of `jihad' in South Asia as a righteous war against foreign oppression. Using Pakistani media and academic sources for the bulk of its raw data, and reinforcing this with scholarly analysis from Western commentators, the book tracks Pakistan's trajectory towards a `soft' Islamic revolution. Envisioned by the country's intelligence community as a solution to chronic governance failures, these narratives called for a re-orientation away from South Asia and towards the Middle East. In the process, Pakistan has become a sanctuary for Arab jihadist groups, such as Al-Qaeda, who had no previous ethnic or linguistic connection with South Asia. Most alarmingly, official discourse on terrorism has been partly silenced by the military-intelligence complex. The result is a slow drift towards extremism and possible legitimation of internationally proscribed terrorist organizations in Pakistan's electoral politics.

Though many scholars and commentators have predicted the death of religion, the world is more religious today than ever before. And yet, despite its persistence, religion remains a woefully understudied phenomenon. With Objective Religion, Baylor University Press and Baylor's Institute for Studies of Religion have joined forces to present select articles from the Institute's Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion that not only highlight the journal's wide-ranging and diverse scope but also advance the field through a careful arrangement of topics with ongoing relevance, all treated with scientific objectivity and the respect warranted by matters of faith. This multivolume project seeks to advance our understanding both of religion and spirituality in general and also of particular religious beliefs and practices. Objective Religion thereby serves as a catalyst for future studies of religion from diverse disciplines and fields of inquiry, including sociology, psychology, political science, demography, economics, philosophy, ethics, history, medicine, population health, epidemiology, and theology. The articles in this second volume, Problems, Prosociality, and Progress, examine the many ways in which religion is linked to prosocial behavior. Whether through classes, retreats, small groups, mission trips, church-sponsored volunteer work, or any number of related group functions, religious participation connects people to multiple networks of social support that are consequential and meaningful. These faith-infused, supportive social networks allow people to build a strong sense of belonging and serve as powerful independent predictors of beneficial outcomes.