Robert L. Nichols is a professor emeritus in history at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn. He is co-editor of Russian Orthodoxy Under the Old Regime.

Stephen Prothero, a religion scholar at Boston University, writes on CNN’s Belief blog that burial at sea was “an elegant solution” to the quandary of what to do with the body, as it thwarts any tendency to turn bin Laden’s burial place into a pilgrimage site for extremists.

Time.com gives an explanation of why bin Laden was buried so quickly, and at sea.

Alexander G. Golitzin is a theology professor at Marquette University in Milwaukee. He is an author of the Historical Dictionary of the Orthodox Church.

Police in  Los Angeles and other cities have heightened patrols near mosques, synagogues and other worship sites. Read about it in an article from the Los Angeles Times.

A Muslim community center in Maine was vandalized May 2, 2011, and mosques in other cities have tightened security.

Michael Walzer is a professor emeritus of social science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. He is a prominent expert on just war theory and the author of Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument With Historical Illustrations.

Richard G. Hovannisian is a professor emeritus in history at University of California, Los Angeles. He has written about and studied the history of Orthodox Christianity.

Paul L. Gavrilyuk is an associate professor in theology at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn. His publications include “Eastern Orthodoxy,” The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Religion (2007).