Mark LeVine is a professor of history at the University of California, Irvine, where he specializes in the Middle East. He has written widely about Islam and politics, including on the subjects of Islam in the public square and Islam and Middle Eastern politics.

Ira M. Lapidus is a professor emeritus of history at the University of California, Berkeley. He is co-editor of the book Islam, Politics and Social Movements. You can read the transcript of a 2003 interview with Lapidus on the subject of contemporary Islamic societies and politics.

Clement Moore Henry is a professor at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He is interested in comparative politics in the Middle East and North Africa.

Mansoor Moaddel is a research affiliate at the Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan, where his focus has been on political attitudes and conflicts in the Middle East.

Orit Bashkin is an assistant professor of modern Middle Eastern Studies at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Chicago. She is an expert on the political and religious history of Iraq.

Michael Peletz is an anthropology professor at Emory University in Atlanta. He is an expert on Islam and politics in Malaysia, Indonesia and other parts of Southeast Asia.

David Gilmartin is a history professor at North Carolina State University and director of its Center for South Asia Studies. He can discuss the politics in Pakistan. He is in Raleigh, N.C.

Raymond Flynn is chairman of the Catholic Alliance, a former mayor of Boston and former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican. His group supported the “Houses of Worship Free Speech Restoration Act of 2005.”

Kevin Hasson is chairman and president of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. Contact through Tom Carter.