Read a December 2010 background paper from the Council on Foreign Relations on the “Threat of Homegrown Islamist Terrorism.”

Read an Aug. 4, 2011, essay by Ed Husain, senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, that criticizes the White House’s August policy paper on preventing violent extremism in the United States. Husain argues that the White House does not focus sufficiently on the threat of homegrown Islamic extremism, and offers […]

A Gallup Poll published in August 2011 showed the views of members of different religious communities to the question of whether terrorist violence is ever justified. Nearly nine in 10 Muslim Americans said violent attacks on civilians are never justified, the highest level of disapproval among the groups surveyed.

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.

One challenge in writing about the Eastern Orthodox is the debate over numbers. A figure often cited is 3 million adherents in the U.S., with about 2 million in the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, 1 million in the Orthodox Church in America, and some tens of thousands in the other 20 major Eastern Orthodox churches. In a […]

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.