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The debate about Islamism in the public sphere / Richard C. Martin and Abbas Barzegar -- Inclusive Islamism : the utility of diversity / Donald K. Emmerson -- Inventing Islamism : the violence of rhetoric / Daniel M. Varisco -- The spectrum of Islamic politics / Graham E. Fuller -- Terminological problems for Muslim lives / Amir Hussain -- Islamism : whose debate is it? / Hassan Hanafi -- Between etymology and realpolitik / Nadia Yassine -- Academic word games / Hillel Fradkin -- Islamism : ism or wasm? / Ziba Mir-Hosseini and Richard Tapper -- Rejecting Islamism and the need for concepts from within the Islamic tradition / Syed Farid Alatas -- Islam at risk : the discourse on Islam and violence / Bruce Lawrence -- Naming terror / Anouar Majid -- Political Islam, liberalism, and the diagnosis of a problem / M. Zuhdi Jasser -- Ideology, not religion / Angel Rabasa -- Why Islamism should be renamed / Feisal Abdul Rauf -- Mitigating misrepresentation / Daniel M.Varisco -- Broadening representation / Donald K. Emmerson

It is my pleasure to introduce Heather Ferguson, associate professor of history at Claremont McKenna College, the new editor of RoMES. Dr. Ferguson will begin officially on 1 July 2017. In the meantime, Ashleigh Breske, the current managing editor, and I will be working with Heather to insure a smooth transition. For those readers who have not had the chance to meet Heather or become acquainted with her work, I will say more below about her impressive credentials. But first, I want to glance back briefly on my term as editor.

This issue of RoMES has been edited in a national atmosphere of anti-Muslim rhetoric, openly expressed by several candidates during the presidential primaries. Now the election campaign has moved to the appointment, by President-Elect, Donald J. Trump, of cabinet members and close advisors, many of whom share his views of the Middle East and its diverse population. And it does not look good for Muslims in America, including Muslims who are U.S. citizens. Along with Hispanics, African Americans, and Jews, Muslims—and indeed the Middle East as such—are regarded as problems that President-Elect Trump seems intent on doing something about. It is a view of Islam and the Middle East shared increasingly in word and deed by a sizeable and vocal portion of the electorate. What are we to make of the possibility of foreign and domestic policy being crafted by the likes of John R. Bolton, who associates Islam with jihadism and is an admirer of the Islamophobic writings of Robert Spencer? Will there be any tolerance in the new Trump administration of debate and the free exchange of ideas on the need for education about and understanding of the Middle East? The importance of this question relates to the growing population of naturalized and second generation citizens of Middle Eastern origins now living in the U.S. The Middle East is here, and contributing to American culture, religious life, economy, and citizenship.

For the past several years since September 11, 2001, large numbers of people from across the continent and around the world have visited the site of the devastated World Trade Center in New York. Scholars in religious studies and the social sciences have noticed that there were and continue to be (though less so over time) religious aspects to the observances and performances of visitors to 'Ground Zero', as the site of the former World Trade Center almost immediately came to be called. A central argument of this article is that the ongoing stream of visitors to Ground Zero, strictly speaking, does not qualify this phenomenon as a pilgrimage in the traditional religious sense; it is more akin to the growing phenomenon of religious tourism, although it is not exactly that either. Nonetheless the event of 9/11 generated many ritualized activities; the article will also address the pro­cess scholars call 'ritualization' and related terms in ritual studies. Although ritualized performances at Ground Zero do not amount to a pilgrimage in the narrow sense that historians of religion mean when they analyse traditional pilgrimages, such as the Hajj to Mecca, or following the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem, visiting Ground Zero has taken on both secular and religious elements.

A reply to Ivan Strenski's (2003) use of the notions of sacrifice & "the gift" to better comprehend human bombings committed by radical Islamic groups. Explanations for the contemporary academic community's inability to explicate religious violence, particularly acts of human bombing committed by radical Islamic groups, are offered. In addition, it is asserted that Western scholars of Islam have expressly disregarded the task of analyzing radical Islamic groups' motivations for perpetrating religious violence. Strenski's examination of French philosophical understandings of sacrifice & the gift & application of these notions to the context of Islamic human bombers is reviewed & appreciated. Nevertheless, Strenski's delineation of Islamic human bombers as individuals who have misinterpreted Islamic theology & tendency to categorize Islamic groups as "good Muslims" or "bad Muslims" is questioned. Consequently, the adoption of an alternative perspective that overcomes these difficulties by closely examining the texts produced by Islamic human bombers is recommended. J. W. Parker