What began as a local political controversy in Denmark became a global crisis. The publication of a series of twelve cartoons depicting the prophet Mohamed in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in 2005 resulted in mass demonstrations throughout the world, the destruction of churches and mosques, economic boycotts, and the death of scores of people in the Middle East and Asia. This “Cartoons Controversy” both highlighted critical questions about the line between freedom of expression and respect for global religious traditions, and underscored the difficulty contemporary states have had in accommodating religion in the political arena. Be it religious minorities in Western democracies who want their traditions respected and elevated as pitted against secular majorities (e.g., France), or religious majorities in the Middle East who want a larger and freer role for religion in their public lives despite the presence of religious minorities and advocates of a more secular role for religion (e.g., Egypt, Israel, Turkey), domestic and international religious controversies have emerged as a critical issue confronting governments over the past decade. Issues like these add a sense of immediacy to the concerns of human rights, conflict, and ethics, the concerns of this book on religion and public policy. As religious ideas, institutions, and actors move toward center stage across the globe, policy makers and academics struggle to understand why religion has become so prominent, and what the implications of this emergence may be for politics and policy. Although this resurgence began in the late 1960s and has continued well into the twenty-first century, recent events in the Arab world underscore the continued importance of religion. Islamic-based parties that won substantial majorities in Egypt and Tunisia and the Taliban seem poised for a comeback in Afghanistan, as foreign forces negotiate their own departures. This contemporary reality—in which understanding religion in all its facets has become increasingly necessary in order to understand and influence world politics—was not supposed to happen.