Talking to the enemy - Scott Atran

Scott Atran has spent years talking to terrorists - from Gaza and Afghanistan, to Indonesia and Europe. Here he argues persuasively that to understand religious violence we need to consider terrorists' close relationships, with family and friends, as much as the causes they espouse. He delivers a fascinating journey into the mindsets of radicalised people in the twenty-first century, and deep insights into the history of all religions.

Scott Atran is a director of research in anthropology at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris, France. He is also a research associate and visiting professor in psychology and public policy at the University of Michigan, a Presidential Scholar in Sociology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and cofounder of ARTIS Research and Risk Modeling.

This deeply researched, wide ranging, and very timely study provides a compelling and often surprising account of what lies behind the jihadi phenomenon . . . . It should be read carefully, and pondered.
Noam Chomsky

Talking to the Enemy is an important book, by turns fascinating, dense, scientific, debatable, illuminating.
The Times - David Aaronovitch

Scott Atran is one of the very few persons who understand religion and have figured out that religion is not about belief and cannot be naively replaced without severe side effects.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan