Written by Paul Cliteur. Cliteur presents secularism as a remedy to religious violence and explains how it enhances democracy.

Liaquat Ali Khan is a professor of law at the Washburn University School of Law in Topeka, Kan. A native of Pakistan, he focuses his research on terrorism and conflict in Muslim societies. He has written extensively about Islamic law and in 2008 wrote an article for The American Muslim about Islamic perspectives on the economic meltdown.

Mark S. Hamm is a professor of criminology at Indiana State University in Terre Haute who specializes in terrorism, in particular right-wing extremism.

Stuart A. Wright is chair of the sociology department at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas. He has written numerous books and articles on religion and violence. He is an expert on government raids on small religious groups suspected of being extremists, like the Branch Davidians. He has studied the relationship between governments, law enforcement officials […]

David Schanzer is director of the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security in Durham, N.C. He is also a visiting professor of public policy at Duke University and an adjunct professor of public policy at the University of North Carolina.

Ami Pedahzur is a government professor at the University of Texas at Austin who has written on political extremism and terrorism, in particular in Israel. His most recent book is Jewish Terrorism in Israel (2009).

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 […]

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 […]

Charles Kimball is Presidential Professor and director of religious studies at the University of Oklahoma. He is the author of When Religion Becomes Evil: Five Warning Signs, and his most recent book is When Religion Becomes Lethal: The Explosive Mix of Politics and Religion in Judaism, Christianity and Islam (April 2011).