Ralph W. Hood Jr. is a psychology professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. He writes and teaches on the psychology of religious fundamentalism.

Lee C. Camp is a professor of theology at Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tenn., and author of Who is My Enemy?: Questions American Christians Must Face About Islam — and Themselves. Camp wrote an Aug. 25, 2011, column for the website Patheos titled “Is Christian Just War Just Like Jihad?,” which argues that Christian and Islamic views […]

Robert W. Hefner is an anthropology professor and director of the Institute on Culture, Religion and World Affairs at Boston University. Since 1991 he has also directed the institute’s program on Islam and society. His many books include (as editor) Shari’a Politics: Islamic Law and Society in the Modern World and (as co-editor) Schooling Islam: The […]

Clark McCauley Jr. is Rachel C. Hale Professor of Mathematics and the Sciences and co-director of the Solomon Asch Center for Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict at Bryn Mawr College. His research focuses on the psychological foundations of ethnic conflict and genocide. At the April 2011 conference at Fordham, McCauley argued that “ideology and religion are more rationalization […]

Charles Kurzman is 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. He is the author of The Missing Martyrs: Why There Are So Few Muslim Terrorists, in which he argues that there are far fewer Islamic terrorists […]

Read a January 9, 2010 New York Times story exploring research on what motivates terrorists.

At an April conference at Fordham University in New York, called “Moral Outrage and Moral Repair: Reflections on 9/11 and its Afterlife,” many speakers explored the connections between violence and religion. Transcripts of their presentations are available on the website.

Read an Aug. 9, 2011, JTA story about the threat of homegrown “domestic terrorism.”

Right-wing extremist violence — against Muslims, Jews, abortion clinics and providers, and the government, for example — is sometimes perpetrated by suspects using Christianity as a justification or motivation. Suspect groups and individuals have drawn scrutiny from the FBI, but the extent and risk of the threat remains a matter of debate, as a July […]