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time, it is natural to harden our hearts to the global pain and deprivation that makes us feel uncomfortable,depressed, and frustrated. Yet we must find ways of contemplating these distressing facts of modern life, or we will lose the best part of our humanity. Somehow we have to find ways of doing what religion—at its best—has done for centuries: build a sense of global community, cultivate a sense of reverence and “equanimity” for all, and take responsibility for the suffering we see in the world. We are all, religious and secularist alike, responsible for the current predicament of the world. There is no state, however idealistic and however great its achievements, that has not incurred the taint of the warrior. It is a stain on the international community thatMamana Bibi’s son can say: “Quite simply, nobody seems to care.” The scapegoat ritual was an attempt to sever the community’s relationship with its misdeeds; it cannot be a solution for us today.

Acknowledgments
    This book is dedicated to Jane Garrett, my friend as well as my editor at Knopf for twenty years. From the very beginning, your encouragement and enthusiasm gave me the strength to persevere with the daily jihad of writing; it was a privilege and a joy to work with you.
    I am also blessed with my editors George Andreou and Jorg Hensgen, whose stringent, meticulous work on the manuscript helped me to push the book into another dimension, for which I am sincerely grateful. My thanks also to all the people who have worked on the book with such skill and expertise—at The Bodley Head: Stuart Williams (editor), Beth Humphries (copy editor), Joe Pickering (publicist), James Jones (jacket designer), Mary Chamberlain (proofreader), and Katherine Ailes (assistant editor); at Knopf: Roméo Enriquez (production manager), Ellen Feldman (production editor), Kim Thornton (publicist), Oliver Munday (jacket designer), Cassandra Pappas (text designer), Janet Biehl (copy editor), and Terezia Cicelova (editorial assistant); and at Knopf Canada: Louise Dennys (editor) and Sheila Kaye (publicist). Many of you I have never met, but be assured I appreciate all you do for me.
    As always, I must thank my agents Felicity Bryan, Peter Ginsberg, and Andrew Nurnberg for their tireless support, loyalty, and, above all, their continued faith in me; this time, I really could not have managed without you. Thanks too to Michele Topham, Jackie Head, and Carole Robinson in Felicity Bryan’s office for helping me so cheerfully through the day-to-day crises of a writer’s life, from bookkeeping to computer meltdowns. And my sincere gratitude to Nancy Roberts, my assistant, for dealing so patiently with my correspondence and for her adamantine firmness in ensuring that I have time and space to write.
    A big thank-you to Sally Cockburn, whose paintings helped me to understand what my book was, in part, about. And, finally, thanks to Eve, Gary, Stacey, and Amy Mott, and Michelle Stevenson at My Ideal Dog, for looking after Poppy so devotedly during her last years and enabling me to do my work. This book is also in loving memory of Gary, who always saw to the heart of things and would, I think, have approved its contents.

Bibliography
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    Adams, Dickenson W., ed. Jefferson’s Extracts from the Gospels. Princeton, NJ, 1983.
    Adams, R. M. Heartlands of Cities: Surveys on Ancient Settlements and Land Use on the Central Floodplains of the Euphrates. Chicago, 1981.
    Agamben, Giorgio. The Kingdom and the Glory: For a Theological Genealogy of Economy and Government. Trans. Lorenzo