http://www.masnet.org/news.asp?id=1620Date Posted: Tuesday, September 07, 2004
Washington (Masnet) - As Russians buried the dead in the wake of the hostage crisis at a school in Beslan, Muslim and Arab newspapers were unanimous Monday in condemning the bloodshed.
One Arab editorial writer wrote a scathing rebuke of Muslims around the world.
"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 listed recent attacks by groups claiming to represent Islam — in Russia, Iraq Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen — many of which he accused of falling under the influence of Osama Bin Laden, the Saudi-born leader of al-Qaeda.
"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.
"The picture is humiliating, painful and harsh for all of us," al-Rashed wrote.
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