Warrant for Terror, by Shmuel Bar

Rowman and Littlefield Publishers

152 pages, $21.95

Shmuel Bar offers a much-needed account of the religious logic that inspires and justifies Islamic radicalism and its terrorist manifestations. His sections on the extremist legal justifications for attacking Americans, civilians, fellow Muslims, and particularly Israel are enlightening and useful for anyone who has wondered how religious thinking can be used to support terrorism.

There are flaws in this book. Comparing classical Islamic law from the ninth and 10th centuries with contemporary international law is ingenuous. And Bar fails to mention that leaders in other religions, including Judaism and Christianity, have offered theological excuses for suicide and the killing of the innocent in the name of God.

Some of the generalizations go beyond the evidence he offers, and Muslim moderates will feel that he has shortchanged the influence of their legal scholars and tradition. Still, Bar makes several important points in a well-organized presentation. His conclusion, that the war of ideas within the Muslim world is primarily a religious war, should be taken seriously. He contends that the problem of terrorism will be resolved only when Muslims expel both the terrorists and their modes of reasoning from the Islamic community.

- Robert Hunt

The God Factor, by Cathleen Falsani

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

288 pages, $24

The author managed to use her day job - religion reporter and columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times - to gather material for an interesting book.

Her idea was to ask celebrities about religion. Eventually, she reached a critical mass of interviews and kept going.

Her list includes the expected - Bono, the Rev. Al Sharpton, Elie Wiesel - and the decidedly less so - Playboy's Hugh Hefner, writer Tom Robbins, actor Harold Ramis, NBA legend Hakeem Olajuwon.

We learn a bit about her Christian faith and a lot about some surprisingly thoughtful folks.

The book is broken up into short profiles and tells you when she did the interviews. She got U.S. Sen. Barack Obama to open up about his faith in 2004, for instance, before the current political focus on Democrats and God-talk.

But there were a few times when she neglected obvious questions: Hefner considers himself moral. But how does he reconcile his ''golden rule'' morality with what has been done in the name of his ''Playboy philosophy''? Brash Sandra Bernhard pursues an increasingly Orthodox Jewish practice. But how does she square that with having a girlfriend?

- Jeffrey Weiss