In the flurry of reactions in the Muslim and Arab press to the Beslan massacre, there have been a number of encouraging signs that some such commentators at least are beginning to say what was previously unsayable and face up to the religious deformity that produced such an event. As the MEMRI translation service reveals, some of these contributions are remarkable in their honesty and candour. Take, for example, Suleiman Al-Hatlan in the Saudi government daily Al-Watan:

'If the "heroes" of the Muslim violence and terrorism do not represent true Islam, then who does represent it? The painful truth is that the acts of violence and barbarism occurring at present are nothing but the natural consequence of generations of Muslims having been misled and force-fed speeches [filled with] hostility and hatred for others over the course of decades, which deepened the backwardness and the ignorance in the Islamic world. There is no nation on the face of the earth that has not had to deal with oppression and war, but these nations have known how to defend their rights through the use of logic and knowledge … while in our Islamic world the voices of ignorance continue in their plans to develop the ignorance and backwardness so that backwardness, degeneracy, and lack of direction will reign even more [than they do now].'

Or Iraqi columnist Aziz Al-Hajj, who wrote on the progressive Internet site www.elaph.com:

'What kind of national cause is this that uses children like gasoline for igniting a total war of destruction in the name of national and religious liberty?… The Islamic-Arab terrorism has turned into the greatest danger in the world, and threatens civilization, security, and life everywhere. It is today the symbol of evil, religious fanaticism, and moral degradation, and it is the essence of political crime in today's world… Islamic terrorism is the outcome of 'moderate' political Islam, as it is generally described. The latest proof of this is Sheikh [Yousef] Al-Qaradhawi's religious legal ruling [ fatwa ] calling for the killing of all Americans in Iraq…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!!'

When people in Britain say such things, of course, they are sacked from their jobs.

Yet at the same time, the pressures on Muslims to adhere to the culture of lies remain overwhelming. In an exchange on WNYC radio in the US, Mamoun Fandy, a columnist for the pan Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat, observed that accompanying the broadcast and publications of the pictures of the massacre in Arab newspapers was a general absence of any sense of outrage. Private views are suppressed, he said, by intimidation:

'I mean, these terrorists killed one of the major writers in Egypt, Farag Fouda, who challenged their rationale for this random jihad. These people are not reluctant to stop and kill in broad daylight'.

Moreover, he said, the Arab media fails to report on killings by Arabs round the world. For the only places where they are free to report is where they are under occupation:

'They are not free anywhere else; that they can report whatever they want from Iraq under the Americans or Palestine under the Israelis, but next door there was the killing of Kurds in Qamishli last month, in Syria, and Al Jazeera was nowhere to be found. There is a genocidal campaign in Western Sudan in Darfur, and there is no coverage of that...There is a general mood in the Arab world to deflect all the problems of the Arab world to the outside world, because governing regimes in that part of the world have very little legitimacy in their own lands, so mainly they live off the threat from the outside that the Israelis are going to get us and the Americans are going to get us, so therefore we don't have to think about our internal situation. There is this slogan that Nasser invented in the '60s [SPEAKS IN ARABIC LANGUAGE] -- "No voice should prevail over the voice of war." That's the dominant slogan, and continues until today.'

That is why the public in Arab lands has no idea of the truth with which to challenge the diet of lies and hatred with which they are fed, to such catastrophic ends. The remarkable thing, however, is that far from bringing this fact in itself to the attention of their own public, the western media impose a conspiracy of silence and instead merely collude with the propaganda of violent conflict.