Beslan

Today one year ago, Muslim terrorists from Chechnya committed what is probably the worst massacre of its type in history, in the North-Ossetian town of Beslan. The reported number of deaths varies, but is thought to be at least 344. Half of those were children. Hundreds more were injured.

The perpetrators were Muslims from the so-called 'break-away' republic of Chechnya, under orders from Shamil Basayev. For a more detailed but somewhat romanticized report on this homicidal maniac go here.

The group of terrorists was made up not only of Chechens. There were Arabs there too, not surprising because Basayev practices Wahhabism, that particularly venomous variety of the already toxic ideology of Islam.

Ostensibly, Basayev is a rebel, a freedom fighter, fighting to free Chechnya from the Russian yoke. And there can be little doubt that Russia's behaviour in Chechnya virtually guarantees an insurgency. Putin's heavyhanded approach to quelling aspirations of sovereignty could only result in a violent backlash.

But this is no time to go into a chicken-and-egg discussion.

Chechnya is predominantly Muslim. And like Bosnia, Albania and Kosovo, worldwide Islam jumped up and took notice when - what was at first - a nationalistic struggle erupted, and made it part of the global war that is currently going on.

Basayev sounds in the interviews like a very angry man. There may be legitimate reason for his hatred against the Russians. It all becomes irrelevant however the moment you feel justified in murdering childeren because children on your side have been murdered.

And you lose any legitimacy you may have had when your co-murderers are people that have nothing whatsoever to do with your cause. You just share a religion with them.

Islam.

It unites Saudi's with Bosnians, Somali's with Pakistani's, Thai's with Algerians and Moroccans with 'Palestinians'. It unites Muslims in their global war on the infidel, and it unites them in their barbarism towards women and children.

There is a lesson Beslan should teach us. It is the same lesson we should draw from the bombings in London and Madrid, from the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York, from the more than eight hundred murders at the hands of Muslim extremists in Southern Thailand in 2004 alone, from the tens of thousands murdered by car- and suicidebombs in Iraq, and the more than a thousand civilian deaths by terrorists in Israel:

There is a global war going on.

It is a war by one ideology against another. And one of the sides doesn't even realize it is at war.