As we listen to the weeping in Russia there are other voices that must be heard.
Security experts around the world will analyse tapes of the carnage at the school in Beslan and work with the Russian government on internal security.
Make no mistake. Regardless of historical conflict, war or any ‘ism,’ terrorists are responsible for the deaths yesterday. Terrorists are responsible for their brutality and they must hear and see the condemnation of the world for these acts.

The other voices that need to be heard are not just the UN security council and western leaders. We send our condemnation and our concern, and these voices must mingle and rise with and above ours. Let them be as heard as clearly as the call to worship from the mineret.

Middle East security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it was too early to know the nationalities of the Arabs among the dead militants. However, a prominent Arab journalist wrote that Muslims must acknowledge the painful fact that Muslims are the main perpetrators of terrorism.

Our terrorist sons are an end product of our corrupted culture,” Abdulrahman al-Rashed, general manager of Al-Arabiya television, wrote in his daily column published in the pan-Arab Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper. It ran under the headline, “The Painful Truth: All the World Terrorists are Muslims!

Al Rashed ran through a list of recent attacks by Islamic extremist groups — in Russia, Iraq, Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen — many of which are influenced by the ideology of Osama bin Laden, the Saudi born leader of the al-Qaida terror network.

“Most perpetrators of suicide operations in buses, schools and residential buildings around the world for the past 10 years have been Muslims,” he wrote. Muslims will be unable to cleanse their image unless “we admit the scandalous facts,” rather than offer condemnations or justifications.

Arab TV, radio and newspapers ran full coverage.

Ahmed Bahgat, an Egyptian Islamist and columnist for Egypt’s leading pro-government newspaper, Al-Ahram, wrote that the images “showed Muslims as monsters who are fed by the blood of children and the pain of their families.”

“If all the enemies of Islam united together and decided to harm it … they wouldn’t have ruined and harmed its image as much as the sons of Islam have done by their stupidity, miscalculations, and misunderstanding of the nature of this age,” Bahgat wrote.

Muslim voices need to reach into deep into madras, mosques and mountains where refugees, militants and mercenaries live. Muslim condemnation needs to be heard in palaces, livingrooms and street corners, for this voice will always speak too.

Ali Abdullah, an Islamic scholar in Bahrain who follows the ultraconservative Salafi stream of Islam, condemned the school attack as “un-Islamic,” but insisted Muslims weren’t behind it.

“I have no doubt in my mind that this is the work of the Israelis who want to tarnish the image of Muslims and are working alongside Russians who have their own agenda against the Muslims in Chechnya,” said Abdullah, reviving an old conspiracy theory altered to fit any situation.

And the world needs to hear Muslim kings and princes and presidents.

Heads of state from around the region condemned the attack. It struck a chord with parents, including Jordan’s King Abdullah II, who denounced it on state-run television.

“As a father, I can tell you that all the fathers and mothers in Jordan pray humbly to God to stand by their counterparts in Russia in their grief,” said Abdullah, whose wife is expecting their fourth child.

“The picture is humiliating, painful and harsh for all of us.”