Liaquat Ali Khan is a professor of law at the Washburn University School of Law in Topeka, Kan. A native of Pakistan, he focuses his research on terrorism and conflict in Muslim societies. He has written extensively about Islamic law and in 2008 wrote an article for The American Muslim about Islamic perspectives on the economic meltdown.

Mark S. Hamm is a professor of criminology at Indiana State University in Terre Haute who specializes in terrorism, in particular right-wing extremism.

Read an October 5, 2011 NPR story about a controversial book by Ken Ballen, Terrorists in Love: The Real Lives of Islamic Radicals. Ballen spent five years interviewing more than 100 Islamic extremists to learn what motivated them to carry out violent attacks against the United States and others they considered enemies of Islam.

In August 2011 the Obama administration released a new “counter-radicalization” policy titled “Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups and domestic terrorism, in February 2011 released an annual report showing “explosive growth” in the number of active hate groups in the United States and in the number of antigovernment “Patriot” movements. These groups often have a religious element to their agendas.

Read an article about the massacre in Norway in July 2011 by anti-Islamic extremist Anders Behring Breivik, who claimed to be a Christian crusader even as he rejected central Christian beliefs, which highlighted the phenomenon of right-wing violence.

John Hospers is a philosopher, an emeritus professor at the University of Southern California and an editor at Liberty magazine. In 1972, he was the Libertarian Party’s first presidential candidate.

Jack Green Musselman directs the Center for Ethics and Leadership at St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas. He says he would like to see more media coverage of the way ethical norms and religious values intersect, overlap and reinforce one another (or fail to) as part of the public debate about morality. 

Carolyn M. Warner is associate professor of political science at Arizona State University in Tempe, and her research interests include religion, politics, patronage and corruption.