is director of Global and International Studies and professor of sociology and religious studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is an expert on religious violence, conflict resolution and south Asian religion and politics, and has published more than two hundred articles and a dozen books. His widely-read Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence (2003), is based on interviews with violent religious activists around the world--including individuals convicted of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, leaders of Hamas, and abortion clinic bombers in the United. A previous book, The New Cold War? Religious Nationalism Confronts the Secular State (1993) covers the rise of religious activism and its confrontation with secular modernity. His most recent book is an edited volume, Global Religions (2003), and he has completed another edited volume on religion in global civil society. He is working on a book on religion and war, and is co-editing the Encyclopedia of Global Religion. He is the 2003 recipient of the prestigious Grawemeyer Award for contributions to the study of religion, and is the 2004 recipient of the Silver Award of the Queen Sofia Center for the Study of Violence in Spain. Since the events of September 11 he has been a frequent commentator in the news media, including CNN, NBC, CBS, BBC, NPR, Fox News and ABC's Politically Incorrect