The scales here are religiosity from zero percent, or atheist, to 100 percent, Bible literally true.

These really are a people who live and breathe the realm of the sacred, a baroque religiosity that is simply awesome.

They did not mind having Americans, British, or French as neighbors. Religiosity did not predict participation, while religious intolerance reduced participation.

In post conflict societies like Croatia, where a hyper nationalism and religiosity have created an environment unbearable for anyone who might be considered a social outcast.

Young people do not become fundamentalists because their parents' culture is ignored by Western civilization. Fundamentalist religiosity is individual and generational, a rebellion against the religion of one's parents.

On the contrary, it requires a special focus. I see this very plainly spending so much time in Jerusalem, where East and West there is an emphatic increase in religiosity.

We traveled high into the paramo, and as we crested the hills, we realized that the men were interpreting every single bump on the landscape in terms of their own intense religiosity.

Now, in their religiosity, in their naivete, my mom and dad, which I believed them to be forever, as they said they were, my mom and dad conceived that I had the Devil inside of me.

The real issue is not a theoretical question about Islam, but concerns the religious practices of Muslims. The forms of religiosity in Islam today are more or less the same as those found in Catholicism, Protestantism, and even Judaism.

Some of this variation may be explained by cross national differences regarding what it means to be religious. For example, Americans may define religiosity differently than Middle Easterners, with perhaps a weaker attachment to religious beliefs than is true in Islamic countries.

To be sure, in all four countries, religiosity is widespread, with more than 90 of respondents collectively reporting that they believe in God, in life after death, and in heaven and hell. But the Saudis appear to be less religious than their fellow Muslims.

These findings, while running contrary to popular perceptions of Saudi culture, are less startling than they appear. Sociologists of religion have long argued that in a monolithic religious environment, or when religious institutions are closely tied to the state, the overall religiosity of the public declines.

And it is an arresting fact that right across the board, in every single one of the major world faiths, compassion the ability to feel with the other in the way we've been thinking about this evening is not only the test of any true religiosity, it is also what will bring us into the presence of what Jews, Christians and Muslims call God or the Divine.

But the gap in self defined religiosity between Saudis, on the one hand, and Iranians, Jordanians, and Egyptians, on the other, is so great that it challenges the prevalent perception of Saudi Arabia as a highly conservative and religious society. Indeed, actions speak louder than words only 28 of Saudis said that they participate in weekly religious services, compared to 27 of Iranians, 44 of Jordanians, 42 of Egyptians, and 45 of Americans.

In opposing how the war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban is fought, many in Pakistan's minuscule middle class find themselves aligned with people they abhor extremists whose distorted religiosity violates the tolerant version of Islam prevalent in this region. Many upwardly mobile urbanites thus find themselves caught on the horns of a dilemma how to reconcile aspirations for a better lifestyle, as symbolized by America, with increasing abhorrence of US policies.