Last week, in the wake of Russian-led investigation, it was reported that when Tamerlan Tsarnaev was in Russia he was, in fact, more eager to wage war than the Islamist contacts he had traveled to find. Accounts reveal that he arrived in Russia with “an avid interest in waging jihad.”
Asma Afsaruddin
Asma Afsaruddin is Professor of Near Eastern Languages & Cultures in the School of Global and International Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington. Her recently-published book Contemporary Issues in Islam (Edinburgh University Press, 2015) discusses in greater detail the fraught relations between Islam and politics, as well as issues of gender, reinterpretations of the Sharia, jihad, and interfaith and intercultural relations between Muslims and non-Muslims.
