Charles Kimball is Presidential Professor and director of religious studies at the University of Oklahoma. He is the author of When Religion Becomes Evil: Five Warning Signs, and his most recent book is When Religion Becomes Lethal: The Explosive Mix of Politics and Religion in Judaism, Christianity and Islam (April 2011).

Mark Juergensmeyer is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Global Studies, Sociology, and affiliate of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he was the founding director of the Global and International Studies Program and the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies. He is an expert on religious violence, conflict resolution and South […]

James W. Jones is an expert in the psychology of religion and teaches in the religion department at Rutgers University. He is the author of Blood That Cries Out From the Earth: The Psychology of Religious Terrorism.

Mohammed M. Hafez is a visiting professor of political science at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He wrote the book Why Muslims Rebel: Repression and Resistance in the Islamic World, and is currently working on a book to be titled,”Suicide Bombers: Politics, Reason, and Faith in Extreme Violence.”

William T. Cavanaugh is a professor of Catholic studies at DePaul University in Chicago, Ill., who has written and researched extensively on the relationship between religion and violence. He is the author of The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict (2009).

Read a January 9, 2010 New York Times story exploring research on what motivates terrorists.

At an April conference at Fordham University in New York, called “Moral Outrage and Moral Repair: Reflections on 9/11 and its Afterlife,” many speakers explored the connections between violence and religion. Transcripts of their presentations are available on the website.

Read an Aug. 9, 2011, JTA story about the threat of homegrown “domestic terrorism.”

Right-wing extremist violence — against Muslims, Jews, abortion clinics and providers, and the government, for example — is sometimes perpetrated by suspects using Christianity as a justification or motivation. Suspect groups and individuals have drawn scrutiny from the FBI, but the extent and risk of the threat remains a matter of debate, as a July […]