This book is intended for a broad readership. Its style is meant to be accessible, without being weighed down by the usual scholarly apparatus of dense and copious footnotes. I have also dispensed with the painstaking transliteration of Arabic names and terms and have adopted simplified spellings that will be more appealing to the nonspecialist English reader. It should be noted that when I introduce a new Arabic term, it is italicized at its first occurrence in each chapter and then subsequently written without italics. Many of these Arabic terms and names are repeated in the glossary at the end of the book. All dates are Common Era (Gregorian) and indicated by CE. For those who may lament the lack of footnotes in this book, I am happy to direct their attention to my longer (and densely footnoted!) book titled Striving in the Path of God: Jihad and Martyrdom in Islamic Thought (Oxford University Press, 2013), which provides full documentation for many of the points made in this work. Readers are encouraged to consult this earlier book as well as other publications listed in the bibliography.
An endeavor of this kind can only benefit from the input of colleagues and friends. I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to John Voll of Georgetown University who took the time out of his very busy schedule to read the full draft of the book. His astute observations and comments were p. xii↵very insightful. Thanks are furthermore due to Mohammad Fadel of the University of Toronto and Tom Heneghan, former religion editor for Reuters and currently a freelance journalist, both of whom read parts of the manuscript and weighed in with their helpful feedback. I also acknowledge the helpful clarifications provided by Timothy Waters of Indiana University on points of modern international law. And, of course, I am grateful to Cynthia Read, indefatigable Executive Editor at Oxford University Press, who invited me to write this volume for the well-known What Everybody Needs To Know series and provided valuable guidance and feedback every step of the way. Her editorial assistant Brent Matheny was a model of efficiency and kept things moving at a brisk pace.
I also need to recognize various family members who kept me honest by constantly inquiring about the progress of this book and encouraging me to race towards the finish line. They include my mother, Maleka Khatun, sister Najma Hasib, and brother-in-law, Mansur Hasib. And, finally, I have to acknowledge the special debt I owe my husband, Steve Vinson, for the moral support he always provides. He also read the whole manuscript and was generous with incisive comments and suggestions for improvement from which I benefitted greatly. Needless to say, remaining shortcomings are mine alone.
