Someone forgot to tell the gunmen who attacked a Protestant service in Bahawalpur, Pakistan, that Islam is a religion of peace.

Last week, assassins with automatic weapons invaded the church, killing 16. When mothers tried to shield children with their bodies, the killers stood over them, methodically firing until the moaning stopped.

The killings were in retaliation for Christian America's bombing of Afghanistan. We bomb terrorists; they kill churchgoers.

President George W. Bush has told us repeatedly that Islam is not to blame for the crimes committed in its name ? that terrorists practice a fringe form of the religion widely repudiated by Muslim clerics and scholars. British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Attorney General John Ashcroft endlessly echo these sentiments.

Among those who've somehow missed the message is Sami Al-Arian. The Kuwaiti native and professor at the University of South Florida was the subject of a Dateline NBC expose. Al-Arian was part of a Muslim delegation that met with Bush when he was campaigning in Tampa last year.

Yet according to NBC, Al-Arian raised money for a Palestinian terrorist group. At a 1995 Chicago conference, the prof told his fellow apostles of understanding that Allah had cursed Jews and Christians: "Those people, God made monkeys and pigs. Jihad is our path. ... Let us damn America. Let us damn Israel."

Islam's message of universal brotherhood and tolerance was also lost on Sheik Muhammad Gamei'a, lately imam of New York's Islamic Cultural Center. When he wasn't participating in interfaith services for World Trade Center victims, the sheik was telling the faithful that Jewish doctors were poisoning Muslim children.

Among Arabs, there is widespread confusion about the Islamic faith. In Saudi Arabia, where Jews can't set foot and Christians have to hide their bibles, a 10th-grade textbook instructs, "It is compulsory for the Muslims to be loyal to each other and to consider the infidels their enemy."

Others who just aren't getting it include·

The suicide squad from the Pakistan-based Army of the Prophet Mohammed (there they go again, distorting Islam's benign teachings) that blew up the legislative assembly building in Kashmir on Oct. 1, killing 26.

Sheik Ahmed Abu Halabiya, who, in a recent sermon broadcast on Palestinian Authority television, raved: "Have no mercy on the Jews…Wherever you are, kill those Jews and those Americans who are like them."

Leaders of Nigeria's Muslim states, who've plunged the nation into chaos by trying to impose Islamic law on non-Muslims. A headline in The New York Times on Thursday read, "Rising Muslim Power in Africa Causes Unrest in Nigeria and Elsewhere." A religion of peace whose advance causes unrest? Interesting.

Demonstrators from West Africa to Indonesia, who hail Osama bin Laden as a savior. In Indonesia, where the Lashkar Jihad forcibly converts Christians to Islam, 50 percent of respondents to an online poll said bin Laden is a "freedom fighter."

Writing in The Wall Street Journal, exiled Iranian journalist Amir Taheri charges: "To claim the attacks (of Sept. 11) had nothing to do with Islam amounts to a whitewash. It is not only disingenuous but also a disservice to Muslims, who need to cast a critical glance at the way their faith is taught, practiced and lived."

Taheri notes that out of 30 active conflicts in the world, 28 involve Muslim regimes or movements. With the exception of Turkey and Bangladesh, no country with a Muslim majority has anything approaching democracy.

Bush has urged American children to adopt pen pals in the Islamic world, to let them know, "We are not at war with Muslims." If he says it often enough, he may just convince himself.

He also asked the kids to each send $1 to an Afghan relief fund.