Acknowledgments

This book would not have been possible without the encouragement and advice of many individuals, more than can possibly be recognized in this brief space. I will nevertheless attempt to acknowledge those to whom I am most greatly indebted. This project builds on the work of several giants in the field of religion and global politics. These individuals include Robert Dowd, Thomas Farr, Jonathan Fox, Anthony Gill, Brian Grim, Allen Hertzke, William Inboden, Ahmet Kuru, Eric Patterson, Timothy Samuel Shah and Monica Duffy Toft, several of whom were kind enough to comment on portions of this manuscript. Foremost among these giants is my mentor and friend Daniel Philpott, without whose support and encouragement this book would not have been written. His thorough reading of numerous draft chapters, thoughtful feedback and constant encouragement helped keep me focused and motivated throughout the writing process. I owe him a profound debt of gratitude.

I am grateful for the helpful feedback offered by several others, including Robert Bosco, Michael Boyle, David Campbell, Kevin Den Dulk, Michael Desch, Robert Joustra, Kathryn Lambert, Paul Lenze, Andres Martinez, Bryan McGraw, Ashlyn Webb and Joshua Su Ya Wu. I am most grateful for the advice, comments and critiques raised in the thoughtful, substantive and thorough reviews offered by the reviewers for Cambridge University Press.

Over the years, I have had the good fortune of working with several excellent student research assistants at the University of Notre Dame and the State University of New York. These students include Sean Callan, Michael Kavanagh, Colin Kerr, Sean Kipybida, Rebekah Klingensmith, Christopher Licata, Samantha Schifano and Jaqueline Shine. I am especially indebted to my assistant of four years, Joshua Fidler, whose work on this book can only be described as virtuoso. Special thanks also to Cassandra Persons who helped me overcome the technical challenges in completing this book.

I thank those at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University – and the Religious Freedom Project in particular – for inviting me to present my work on religious freedom and violent religious extremism at the summit “International Religious Freedom: Towards a Model of Transatlantic Cooperation” in 2015. I am also grateful to the leadership of the Religious Freedom Institute – especially Thomas Farr and Timothy Samuel Shah – for arranging for me to present my findings on religious repression and terrorism to the National Security Council of the United States and the US Department of State in 2017. The feedback I received at these events, both from scholars and from policymakers, helped strengthen the arguments and evidence in the pages that follow.

This project draws, in part, on the quantitative data on religion–state arrangements and international religious freedom painstakingly compiled by Roger Finke, Jonathan Fox, Brian Grim and those at the Pew Research Center. The quantitative, cross-national study of religion has made rapid progress thanks to the hard work of these individuals.

My editor at Cambridge University Press, John Berger, did an outstanding job editing this book. I thank John for so enthusiastically believing in this project and for his patience in seeing it through. I am grateful to John’s team at Cambridge University Press who managed the day-to-day operations of this project, especially Danielle Menz and Rebecca Jackaman. Special thanks also to my copyeditor, Ami Naramor, for so assiduously reading this manuscript.

Generous research support for this book was made possible through grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Research Office of the State University of New York and the University of Notre Dame.

Finally, I thank my wife, Jessica, and my children, Cristiano and Sanjay, who were a constant source of moral support throughout. It is to them I dedicate this book.