“Have we healed? Yes, healed with a hole. It’s never a complete healing, but at least there a willingness to write a new chapter of life,” says Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, a New York Fire Department chaplain.

“For most of the French, religion was an enemy of democracy, liberalization, freedom,” says this political scientist who specializes in Islamic studies, and “a synonym for public disorder.”

We review some of the week's leading religion news stories, from deadly riots in Afghanistan over the burning of a Quran at a Florida church to the morality of the budget to a church-state decision from the Supreme Court.

An acclaimed new movie shows that a monastery is "at once a refuge and a very integral part of the world," says Jesuit priest James Martin, and that "the life of faith is not without doubt."

The much-praised French film "Of Gods and Men" dramatizes the essence of universal Christian love, according to the author of the book on which the movie is based.

On March 10, Rep. Peter King, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, is to open hearings on "the radicalization of American Muslims." Watch excerpts from a Capitol Hill briefing held in advance of the hearings.

"We want to prove to America that we are not terrorist suspects," says Imam Mahdi Bray. US Islamic groups have launched several projects to fight extremism within their own communities, particularly among young people.

"There's a lot of compatibility between the notion of Islamic finance and microfinance," says Roshaneh Zafar, who established a nonprofit organization that has made small business loans to hundreds of thousands of women.

During decades of war in Sudan, says John Ashworth of Catholic Relief Services, the church was the only institution that stayed on the ground with the people. Now they are voting in the south in a referendum for independence from the Muslim-majority national government in the north.

Join our discussion of the most anticipated religion and ethics news in 2011, from social and cultural issues to the political and economic debates that loom ahead.