Martyrs

Book excerpt: Martyrs offers compelling and 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 violence 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 at the despondency of the mothers of those who die and kill. Unsettling as the perspectives presented here may be, they are crucial to understanding, though not accepting, the fury at and resentment of the US.