It's been a very long time since Arabic-speaking peoples brought benefit to humanity by, say, developing new medicines and technology or advancing democracy and human rights.
Indeed, the area where the Arabophones seem most adept at innovation would be terrorism. Airplane hijackings, suicide bombings, and mega-terrorism are among their claims to originality.
And now comes the wave of suicide bombers. Note the news from Iraq, "3 suicide bombers used to kill tenacious Iraqi cop," concerning the assassination of police commander Lt. Col. Shamil al-Jabouri by al-Qaida:
As al-Jabouri slept Wednesday morning on a couch in his office, three men wearing police uniforms over vests laden with explosives slipped through an opening in the blast walls surrounding the compound where his building stood, police said.
Police manning one of at least four observation towers surrounding the compound shot one of the attackers in a yard and his vest exploded. Under the cover of that blast, police said, the other two suicide bombers charged about 100 yards (90 meters) and made it into al-Jabouri's single-story building.
They detonated their vests simultaneously - one at the door of al-Jabouri's office - killing the commander instantly and injuring a policeman sleeping in a trailer nearby. The two blasts brought the whole building down, burying the slain commander under the rubble, police said.
Comment: The effectiveness of this cruel new tactic makes it likely to be repeated, and not just in Arabic-speaking countries, either. (December 29, 2010)
June 9, 2013 update: Another Arab terrorism innovation, even more foul than the prior ones: the rectum bomb. Rod Nordland notes its first known use to try to assassinate Prince Muhammad bin Nayef, the deputy interior minister, in Jidda, Saudi Arabia, in August 2009. The second one just occurred, against Asadullah Khalid, head of Afghanistan's the National Directorate of Security.
Related to this is the underwear bomb, which first came to public attention in the Islamist attempt inspired from Yemen to bring down a Northwest airplane approaching Detroit in December 2009.
