I could have written "There's no bloody business like Islam's" but that would have offended most Muslims who are peaceful ... and silent.

I wrote "Kin People" on June 29, before the nationalities of the three suicide bombers were revealed. Now I'd change those words to "Jihadists" in the title.

what Unholy book contains the word jihad? the Koran, kiddies.

If Islam is the book of peace, why is there no peace in the Middle East?

You want to know why there's no peace?

Murderous jihadism arises from a self-pitying, resentful, victim culture whose original sin is the politicization of religion. Religious law is hostile to free will and free inquiry, and this attitude has thwarted achievement since the 13th Century.

Consider science. There are roughly 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, but only two scientists from Muslim countries have won Nobel Prizes in science (one for physics in 1979, the other for chemistry in 1999). Forty-six Muslim countries combined contribute just 1 percent of the world’s scientific literature; Spain and India each contribute more of the world’s scientific literature than those countries taken together. In fact, although Spain is hardly an intellectual superpower, it translates more books in a single year than the entire Arab world has in the past thousand years.

Comparative metrics on the Arab world tell the same story. Arabs comprise 5 percent of the world’s population, but publish just 1.1 percent of its books, according to the U.N.’s 2003 Arab Human Development Report. Between 1980 and 2000, Korea granted 16,328 patents, while nine Arab countries, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the U.A.E., granted a combined total of only 370, many of them registered by foreigners. A study in 1989 found that in one year, the United States published 10,481 scientific papers that were frequently cited, while the entire Arab world published only four. This may sound like the punch line of a bad joke, but when Nature magazine published a sketch of science in the Arab world in 2002, its reporter identified just three scientific areas in which Islamic countries excel: desalination, falconry, and camel reproduction.

On the other hand, Western capitalism and colonialism in the 20th Century, especially related to the greed for oil, conspired to keep Islamic oligarchies corrupt and its peoples backward and humiliated. There are no clean hands.

I am impressed if the real Bernard Lewis, now 100 year old, has contributed to this thread; I remain suspicious. Constant and noble attention to attribution is essential to historical documentation as well as science. Your information is fascinating (although the denominator seems to vary between the Arab and Islamic worlds); perhaps 'your' summary, duly attributed, could be published in the right venue. @BJM; Your effort was off-target re attribution of the attack, otherwise a clever attempt to revive a favorite nonsensical old song.

I am Lewis Bernard, the famous insomniac. If I were the esteemed, superannuated Bernard Lewis, I should have given my name as Lewis (comma) Bernard, you mangy twit. As for attribution for all my facts and figures, I am furious that you do not TAKE MY WORD for them!

@Lewis; Sorry to learn of your troubling insomnia. You should commune with Phyllis, who commented three items back on our Limericks thread; she is similarly afflicted.

Unacceptable answer LB. All of the adherents of the Bible, Torah, and Quran feel persecuted nowadays. Anti-Islam, Anti-Semitism, Anti-Christian. Muslims feel the West hates them for Daesh and 9/11; Jews are always blamed for war, financial greed, and oppressing the poor crazed Palestinians; and Christians are being persecuted for standing up morally to homosexuality, abortion on demand, and to ensure Second Amendment rights. Where is the personal accountability from these people of faith who are bound to their so-called common God and his commands to be tolerant and love others? Blaming someone or something all the time is excuse-making. It always has been. Religion isn't bad, religious extremism is. There's no peace in this world for lack of true peacemakers. Circumstances? Hell no! Ever hear the word overcome?

E.B., there is nothing in what you write that contradicts my previous comment. But to sum up the "personal accountability" of all religious fundamentalists: "It's God's will" and "The Devil made me do it."
Regarding religious tolerance: Insulting the Prophet is something that has been going on in Europe for a very long time. In Dante’s Inferno, the 28th Canto, where Dante is being taken on his conducted tour of Hell and guided by Virgil, he comes across the Prophet Mohammed in the course of his eternal damnation. He is punished – I quote Dante’s words, as a “seminator di scandalo e di scisma,” a sower of scandal and of schism. In the great Cathedral of Bologna there is a wonderful set of pictures painted in the 15th century depicting scenes from Dante’s Inferno, including some very graphic pictures of Mohammed being tortured in Hell by the Devil.
Nobody did anything about this. A few years ago, the leaders of the Italian-Muslim community sent a polite request to the cathedral saying these are insulting to Muslims; would they mind covering those pictures. The cathedral administration said they would consider it. Nothing happened. The pictures are still in view.
So, terrorists aside, which religion, in this incident, has shown itself to be intolerant?
Progress and civic virtue exist in direct proportion to the absence of religion.
A pox on all their houses of stupefaction, I say! Today, my Bible is The Declaration of Independence.