Friday night on “Real Time with Bill Maher,” host Bill Maher discussed the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing and noted that while bad things happen in the world for all kinds of reasons, religion is still the main cause of mayhem and terrorism in the world.

Maher opened by saying that the reaction to his bombing has been “so different” than the reaction of the country after 9/11.

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Author Salman Rushdie agreed, but Journalist Nicholas Kristoff opined that the scale of the two attacks was very different. “New York was such a greater event,” he said. “Boston was much smaller and it’s been over much more quickly.”

Conservative guest Amy Holmes said that she has seen a new “maturity” in the U.S. over the past decade. Holmes is a news anchor for Glenn Beck’s Blaze TV.

Maher posed the question as to whether it matters whether the Tsarnaev brothers have any connection to al Qaeda. Holmes said the believes it’s very important because it would mean that foreign terror operations are now funding actions here in the U.S., but Maher was less certain.

“But why does it matter?” Maher asked. “It’s the ideology.” Whether they’re certified al Qaeda loyalists, he said, seems less important, “because they’re working for the same cause,” religious fundamentalism. There is growing evidence that the older Tsarnaev brother, Tamerlan, was a deeply religious Muslim.

“Isn’t the takeaway here,” he asked, “that there are many bad things that can happen in the world, for many bad reasons, but the winner and still champ is religion?”

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Watch the video, embedded below via Mediaite: