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“Message of the Holy Father Benedict XVI for the 43rd World Communications Day”

In his message for the Catholic Church’s World Communications Day of 2009, Pope Benedict XVI also cautioned that if “virtual connectedness becomes obsessive, it may in fact function to isolate individuals from real social interaction while also disrupting the patterns of rest, silence, and reflection that are necessary for healthy human development.”

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“Why Is It So Hard to Find a Suicide Bomber These Days?”

Read an essay in the September/October 2011 edition of Foreign Policy magazine by Charles Kurzman titled “Why Is It So Hard to Find a Suicide Bomber These Days?” Kurzman, a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and co-director of the Carolina Center for the Study of the Middle East and Muslim Civilizations, is […]

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“Most Muslim Americans See No Justification for Violence”

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.

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“‘Terrorists in Love’: The Psychology of 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.

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S. Cromwell Crawford

S. Cromwell Crawford is professor and chairman of religion at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He is author of The Evolution of Hindu Ethical Ideals (University of Hawaii Press, 1982), has taught a course on ethics in world religions and has written about Hindu ethics and the environment.

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