It's the beginning of the end for the terrorists, saysMansoor Ijaz in National Review Online
"Like him or not, Vladimir Putin's resolve to stare down Beslan's terrorists--about whom he understood nothing--will (if by accident) be seen one day as a turning point in the war against extremism, because the depravity of Beslan's architects has turned the silent majority in the Muslim world on its ear. Editors, political leaders, and mullahs from Jeddah to Istanbul to Jakarta are decrying the insanity of the Beslan murders. And they are beginning to realize that always blaming others for their woes won't help elevate their disaffected people or spread the word of their failed vision any faster or better.
"We Muslims (I am an American whose faith remains that of the humane and dignified Islam) have no legs to stand on anymore when those who proclaim our religion are willing to put a gun to a child's head, pull the trigger, and call it an act of martyrdom. Islam no longer carries a message of hope, only the indelible impressions of cruelty. Its purveyors are bankrupt of ideas that inspire, and have failed in an ideology that in its very heart today has become hypocritical. To top it all off, America's Muslims--whose freedom to craft and convey an opposition to the terrorist cancer is protected by the very people those terrorists seek to destroy, sit silent-- stone cold silent.
"Islam's 'vanguard,' as Zawahiri called it, has an opportunity to redefine the message and turn away from the extremists. America will win the war against extremism because America's values are righteous, and because God, whatever you conceive Him to be, is at our side. But Islam will surely lose its credibility as a great religion if its benefactors don't stand now and drive the final nail into the coffin of the terrorists who have hijacked a noble faith."