Bassam Tibi is a professor of international relations at the University of Göttingen in Göttingen, Germany, and an expert on radical fundamentalism in political Islam throughout Europe and the Middle East.

Warren Goldstein teaches American history at the University of Hartford, where he chairs the history department. He is the author of Playing for Keeps: A History of Early Baseball, and he wrote an essay in the Nov. 1, 2003, Christian Century magazine titled, “Winning Isn’t Everything: Baseball as a Theological Discipline.”

Jonathan Laurence is an assistant professor of political science at Boston College in Boston. He specializes in Muslim identity in Europe, especially in Germany and France. He has written widely about the integration of Muslims in France, including on the controversy of Muslim girls wearing hijab to public school.

Jocelyne Cesari is a professor of Religion and Politics, working primarily in the Edward Cadbury Centre for the Public Understanding of Religion at the University of Birmingham.

Pastor Herb Lusk is a former Philadelphia Eagles tailback who is thought to be the first NFL player to kneel and pray in the end zone after scoring a touchdown, in 1977. Since 1982 Lusk has headed the congregation at the Greater Exodus Baptist Church in Philadelphia.

Husain Haqqani is a senior fellow at the Center on Islam, Democracy and the Future of the Muslim World and director for the Center for International Relations at Boston University. He is the author of Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military.

Hassan Abbas is a research fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs in Cambridge, Mass. He is an expert on religious extremism in South and Central Asia and is the author of a book on extremism in Pakistan.

Read a Jan. 29, 2013, article from The Atlantic that compares sports fans to members of a religious congregation.

Read a July 31, 2012, article from The Wall Street Journal about the struggles Muslim women face while competing in the Olympics.