Emeritus Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks is to explore the origins of religious violence in his next book.

“Not in God’s Name: Confronting Religious Violence” will be published in June by Hodder Faith.

Lord Sacks said that “the greatest threat to freedom in the post-modern world is radical, politicised religion. It is the face of what I call in the book ‘altruistic evil' in our time. This poses a theological challenge to all three Abrahamic monotheistic faiths – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – that forces all of us, Jews, Christians and Muslims, to ask the most uncomfortable questions.

"If we fail in this task, we will face a continuation of the terror that has marked our century so far, for it has no other natural end. Faith is God’s call to see His trace in the face of the Other. It is this theology of the Other which I have tried to articulate in this book.”

A lecture, based on the theme of the book which he gave last year, is available on his website.

The third volume of his Torah commentaries, on Leviticus, which is based on his Covenant & Conversation email essays, is out next month.