Violence and Belief in Late Antiquity

Thomas Sizgorich is ... a scholar truly at home in both the late antique and early Islamic worlds who does a superlative job of illustrating the continuities between them. -American Historical Review In this bold and learned book, Thomas Sizgorich probes the ideological roots of violence in the Christian and Muslim communities of late antiquity. -Church History A work of erudition and eloquent argument, combined with an abiding ethical impulse underwriting its historical project. Sizgorich has done a great service by historicizing some elements of religious violence and uncovering its underlying logics with sophistication and care. -Catholc Historical Review Sizgorich brings the early history of Islamic martyrdom and the emergence of the concept of the shahid ('witness' or 'martyr') into a common framework of similar developments in late antique Christianity in the eastern Mediterranean and the Levant. In doing so, he shows that the two worlds were closely related in their development of apparently different kinds of aggressive, even violent behavior that were connected to ideas of ascetic self-control and the disciplining of the community. -Brent D. Shaw, Princeton University An original, impressive, fascinating, and very important book. Sizgorich makes a seminal contribution by offering an alternative to the tendency that treats Islam as completely 'other' from the world in which it took shape. He offers instead a vision of an Islam that is an organic part of the late antique cultural and religious world. -Nadia Maria El-Cheikh, American University of Beirut