Thankfully, Muslim voices are beginning to be heard condemning terrorism in general and the Beslan atrocity in particular. MEMRI has a good summary of the Arab reaction to Beslan including a few impassioned pleas by Muslims to disavow terror. Perhaps the best is this one:
Bater Wardam, a columnist for the Jordanian daily Al-Dustour, wrote: "It is always easy to flee to illusions and to place responsibility for the crimes of Arabic and Muslim terrorist organizations on the Mossad, the Zionists, and on American intelligence, but we all know that this is not the case and that those who murder innocent civilians in Iraq after having kidnapped them, those who turned civilian airplanes into destructive bombs, those who exploded trains crowded with innocent civilians and those who fired on children in a school in Ossetia - they came from our midst. They are Arabs and Muslims who pray, fast, grow beards, demand the wearing of veils, and call for the defense of Islamic causes. Therefore we all must raise our voices, disown them and oppose all of these crimes... Whoever remains silent when faced with the murder of children, he is an accomplice to the crime. Even worse, we are employing the same moral double standard regarding people's lives that the West uses."
The last sentence is a little mysterious, but at least the overall sense of the paragraph is on the right track. This one from an Iraqi newspaper man is also on the mark:
"The Arabs and the Muslims today contribute nothing to civilization and progress except for blood, severed heads, scorched bodies, and the abduction and murder of children. The Jihad for religion and Arab chivalry have turned into the art of exploding, booby-trapping, and spilling blood. What an innovation and what a social contribution the Arabs have made in the 21st century!!"
On the other hand, there are still those so blind that they will not see. For instance, several writers, like this one, blame the Russian military, incredibly enough, who are said to be as guilty as the abductors:
Columnist Fawwaz Al-Ajami wrote in the Qatari daily Al-Sharq: "It is impossible to correct a mistake with another mistake and it is impossible to treat terrorism with terrorism. There are many ways and methods with which it would have been possible to save these innocent children's lives. The barbaric Russian storming of this school was no less ugly and no less terrorist than the terrorism of these child-abductors. In this way state terrorism becomes the equivalent of individual terrorism with the victim being innocent civilians..."
Apparently there's no difference, in this man's mind, between soldiers trying to rescue children and terrorists who arrange to murder them. And, of course, no round-up of Islamic opinion on terrorism would be complete without somebody blaming the Jews:
In the Jordanian government daily Al-Dustour, columnist George Haddad wrote: "More than one Russian commentator and a number of journalists on the satellite channels pointed out that Russian intelligence had information concerning 'contributions' that some of the Chechen factions received from Jewish oligarchs from the fields of finance, communications, and oil... [These are] the owners of the corporations and billions which were stolen from the Russian people, that after Putin's rise to power and the establishment of his rule became wanted on charges of deceit, fraud, and tax evasion.
"The most important goal of the wanted Jewish gang was to distort Putin's [public] image and to present him as someone who is not in charge of the situation, [and who is incapable] of reining in the anarchy, and who is leading the country and its residents back to the days of repression, dictatorship, and state control."
Of course. Why didn't we think of that. After all, we know the Jews were behind 9/11 because no Jews showed up for work in the Trade Towers that day. How plain can it be?
So there are some rational minds sprinkled throughout the Islamic world, but evidently they have an awful lot of work to do to overcome the darkness that clouds the minds and hearts of so many of their brethren.
