I think forgiveness plays a very important part in Western society and it comes from the Judeo Christian heritage.

By working and living in New York, you are breathing Western civilization, continuously reminded of its benefits and its values.

Human rights transcend local or ethnocentric values, conferring equal dignity and value on all humanity regardless of sex, ethnicity, sexual preference, or religion. It is in the West that human rights are most respected.

Surprisingly one of the forces for secularisation was Christianity itself. As soon as it accepted the idea of a contrary opinion, the moment that European opinion decided for toleration, it decided for eventual free marketing opinion.

I wish more people would belabor the obvious, and more often.

Of course slavery and the Muslims were deeply implicated in the slave trade, Islam was an Imperialist religion which destroyed Christianity in the Near East, yet nobody mentions those facts.

As Luxenberg's work has only recently been published we must await its scholarly assessment before we can pass any judgements. But if his analysis is correct then suicide bombers, or rather prospective martyrs, would do well to abandon their culture of death, and instead concentrate on getting laid 72 times in this world, unless of course they would really prefer chilled or white raisins, according to their taste, in the next.