Martyrs

Innocence, Vengeance and Despair in the Middle East Terrorist attacks, suicide bombings, ongoing violence in the Middle East: Why do people engage in such cruelty, what drives them, and can they even be understood? Martyrs begins to answer such questions through com-pell-ing and often chilling interviews with terrorist trainers, with the families of suicide bombers, fighters, and fanatics, and with Muslim scholars offering differing opinions on the legitimacy of vio-lence and, especially, shuhada-martyrdom-in Islam. Through the voices of those who plan and those who grieve, Martyrs provides provocative and troubling insights into the zealotry that leads to the targeting of innocents, the endless cycle of revenge, and the despair that besets the Middle East. From Iran to Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, Joyce Davis reports on the rage that drives tragedies and on the despondency of the mothers of those who die and kill. Un-settling as the perspectives presented here may be, they are crucial to understanding the fury at and resentment of the United States.