What preconceptions and resources undergird a survey of the intimate intersections between two such vast topics over the past 2,000 years by an American-educated Frenchman? A little history proves helpful. In 2007, the same academic press translated Blin’s jointly authored examination, in French, of terrorism’s long and complex history, beginning with the Jewish Zealots—The History of Terrorism: From Antiquity to al-Qaeda. Twelve years later, in this sequel, which needs no translator, Gérard Chaliand, Blin’s former senior co-editor, copiously thanked in the acknowledgements, reappears on the back-cover blurb, and the Zealots again dominate the first chapter.
This time, religion rather than terrorism drives the narrative; the usual “big three” Abrahamic monotheistic suspects hold center stage. Buddhism gets passing mention for its “penetrating discussion of the ethics of war” in the Bhagavad Gita (18). Meanwhile, the 20 percent of humanity living in the Chinese Middle Kingdom, where “religious identity has...