“Gunmen stormed a girls' school in the desert region of Darfur, chained a group of students together and set the building on fire. The charred remains of eight girls were still in shackles when military observers from the African Union arrived on the scene.” Marc Lacey of the New York Times. This is just one of the many stories that are being reported on the killings in Darfur Sudan.

These kinds of bizarre actions by rebels armed by the Khartoum government did not start yesterday - they are the same scorched-earth tactics they used against the southern rebel group, the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA). Bombing villages suspected of rebel sympathies, arming and encouraging militias to kill and pillage in rebel-held areas, raping their women, girls and boys, and later matching them northwards where they distributed then to Arab masters, the women and girls became concubines and the boy's goat herders - These are some of the actions that were known to be a norm. But all that is said to have ended early this year when the government in Khartoum and the SPLA sighed a treaty to give peace a chance.

As the government was talking peace with the south, it was arming the Janjaweed rebels (lighter-skinned Arabs) to carrying out the massacres against the dark skin African Muslims located in Darfur the western region of Sudan.

Now from the refugee camps in Chad, women are telling gruesome tales of how their husbands and sons were killed, how their homes were set a blaze, stories of how they were raped and how they had to flee to distant refugee camps seeking for refuge, food and shelter. It has been reported that 1.2 million of Darfur's 6 million people live in abysmal camps or in impromptu settlements, while thousands are said to have been killed and several hundred thousand may die of starvation or disease.

These actions by the Janjaweed are becoming hard to explain in words. What bothers me most is that there is no Muslim leader or group that has condemned these actions. Muslims were in the front line when demonstrations went on around the world condemning the war that’s going on in Iraq. Arab leaders have joined the United Nation and the International Court of Justice to criticize the wall Israel is building in the West Bank. Why is it that no Muslim leader joined Collin Powel and Kofi Annan in Sudan to seek for a solution? Why is it that no Muslim has taken to the streets to denounce the killings? Or why haven’t they set camps outside any Embassies of Sudan around the world and request to know why the Sudanese government is encouraging killings amongst their Muslim brothers and sisters? Is there are double standard in this?

The Koran preaches peace and love. It talks of living peaceful with your neighbor, providing shelter and food to those in need. But this is not what is going on around Darfur. Raping women so that they can give birth to light skin children, killing dark skin boys and men so that their kind would vanish without a trace is not in any teaching of the Koran. What makes it more disturbing to that these are Muslims killing their fellow Muslim and the rest of the Muslim world remains mute.

What ever is going on in Darfur is sickening and pitiful. We do not need to see a repeat of what happened in Rwanda or Kosovo. There are lots of ways this can be brought to an end. The world would like to see Muslim leaders take the front line in denouncing these barbaric acts. For most of them, all it takes is a phone-call and a meeting with the leaders in Khartoum and the Janjaweed rebels would disappear never to be heard again. Arab leaders, why not make this a dream come true to the poor Darfurians who are now seeking a safe heaven in Chad?