A report by the Pew Center on Religion and Public Life found that Islam and politics made up a major part of religion coverage in 2011 and predicts that the global Muslim population will increase 35% by 2030 to 2.2 billion (from 1.6 billion in 2010).

While 1 in 5 people practice Islam internationally, A survey by Pew in 2010, The U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey, found that about half of Americans are able to correctly identify the Quran and Ramadan as associated with Islam.

Stephanie Summers is CEO of the Center for Public Justice, a Christian-based policy research center.

Amy Sullivan is a contributing writer for TIME magazine and a former editor for Washington Monthly, where she wrote of the Democrats’ need to reclaim religion from the Republican Party. She is the author of The Party Faithful: How and Why Democrats are Closing the God Gap (Scribner, 2008).

Michael Barone is a senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner and co-author of The Almanac of American Politics 2012. He has said Americans increasingly vote as they pray or don’t pray.

Corwin E. Smidt is a research fellow at the Paul B. Henry Institute for the Study of Christianity and Politics and a professor of political science at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich. He is author, editor or co-author of books on religion and public life, including In God We Trust? Religion and American Political […]

Melissa Harris-Perry is a professor of political science at Tulane University in New Orleans, host of MSNBC’s “Melissa Harris-Perry” and author of Barbershops, Bibles, and BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought (Princeton University Press, 2004).

Bruce David Forbes is a professor of religious studies at Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa, specializing in religion in America and religion and popular culture. He is co-editor of Rapture, Revelation and the End Times: Exploring the ‘Left Behind’ Series. Forbes also co-edited the book Religion and Popular Culture in America.

Geoffrey Layman is chair of the political science department at the University of Notre Dame and co-editor of the journal Political Behavior. He wrote The Great Divide: Religious and Cultural Conflict in American Party Politics.