People are never as enthusiastically evil as when they act out of religious conviction."

Simonini says this with certainty, but we do not have to believe it. He is just a fictitious character in Umberto Eco's novel The Prague Cemetery, someone who lives from lies and falsehood.

No, we don't have to believe it. But we have, recently, seen photos of the necks of people beheaded in Iraq, mosques where the faithful have been shot in Pakistan, a group