Talal Asad. On Suicide Bombing. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. Pp. 128. Hardbound. ISBN: 978-0-231-14152-9. Price not given.
In this slim volume Talal Asad deconstructs the liberal discourse on the current categories of "war" and "terrorism" while extending and adding new dimensions to the already existing studies on contemporary modes of violence and terrorism. He advances his project of "deconstruction" of modernity and liberal democracies and elaborates on the continuities and cleavages between secular modernity and its past by discussing terrorism, one of the contemporary modes of violence. Whereas Asad examines the colonial and post-colonial construction of the …