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Jean E. Rosenfeld, Ph.D.
UCLA Center for the Study of Religion
"Religion is, among other things,
a construction of ultimate
reality by means of an elaborate, self-consistent
system
of interpretation that is regarded as absolute
truth."1
Introduction
As a historian, I prefer to work with documents
gathered in tranquility about events that have already happened and
people that are already off the scene, but as a student of new religious
movements I am seldom allowed that luxury. When religion goes bad,
so to speak, hell really can break loose, and one must scramble to
gather as much data as possible from any available source about the
phenomenon. Since September 11, 2001, when nineteen hijackers, assumed
to be related to Usamah bin Ladin's Al Qa'ida movement, drove three
commercial jetliners into the twin towers of the World Trade Center
and the side of the Pentagon, I have gathered data from television,
the Internet, and a number of helpful colleagues, as well as from more
traditional sources. Some of the most relevant data may not yet be
accessible or may be prohibited from the public domain. Material snatched
from the web one week may be gone the next. Needless to say, I regard
this paper as a work-in-progress.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Sandra Campbell,
a scholar of Islam, for her advice regarding Arabic terms, and Jean-Francois
Mayer and Louis J. Vandenberg for their collegiality and data-sharing.
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