Read a March 3, 2011, Gazette article about how the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers leased land in Iowa so Muslim Youth Camps of America could build a summer camp and the efforts to build the camp after the lease expired.

Read a June 4, 2003, article on the Fox News website on the controversy over a Muslim youth camp in Iowa.

Brendan Freeman is a Cistercian monk and abbot of New Melleray Abbey, a community of about 30 monks in Peosta, Iowa. The monks hand-make wooden caskets and urns that they bill as a “soulful alternative” to more elaborate caskets.

Bruce David Forbes is a professor of religious studies at Morningside College in Sioux City, Iowa, specializing in religion in America and religion and popular culture. He is co-editor of Rapture, Revelation and the End Times: Exploring the ‘Left Behind’ Series. Forbes also co-edited the book Religion and Popular Culture in America.

Antonio R. Damasio, University of Iowa neurology professor, studies fundamental mechanisms of cognition. He is the author of The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness (Harcourt, 2000).

John Lyden became editor of the University of Nebraska-Omaha’s Journal of Religion and Film in 2011. He was professor of religion at Dana College from 1991-2010 and is now director of the Liberal Arts Core at Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa. Lyden is the author of Film as Religion: Myths, Morals and Rituals and editor of The Routledge Companion […]

Cynthia Mahmood is Frank Moore chair of anthropology and professor of anthropology at Central College in Pella, Iowa. Fascinated by religious motivations for militancy, Mahmood specializes in the anthropology of violence, war and peace, terrorism, guerilla warfare, and language and culture. Her signature area of expertise has been upheaval among India’s Sikhs She is author of Fighting […]

The Pluralism Project at Harvard University offers a state-by-state search engine for religious communities.