A conference in Mecca of Islamic leaders representing Muslims in a wide swath from Morocco through the Middle East and South Asia to the southern Philippines has issued a rare but resounding denunciation of terror, saying that violence must be condemned "in all its forms and manifestations."

Hardly anyone outside the Muslim world, however, seems to have heard about the Islamic pronouncement. Therefore, the "Mecca Declaration" approved by the Islamic leaders is not likely to counter the common complaint in the West that few prominent Muslims have condemned the terrorists who have given Islam a bad name.

An Arab editor, Abd al-Rahman al-Rashid, has been an exception, writing: "It is certainly true that not all Muslims are terrorists but, sadly, we have to say that the majority of the terrorists in the world are Muslims."

Many Americans, in particular, have faulted moderate Muslims for not taking a position against terror.

In an effort to neutralize the spreading image of Islam as a source of violence against innocent people, the Organization of the Islamic Conference of 57 Muslim governments convened for two days earlier this month in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, Islam's holiest city, to assert that Muslim nations were as much against terror as other nations.

The high-level speakers included the kings of Saudi Arabia and Morocco, the prime ministers of Malaysia and Bangladesh, and the presidents of Pakistan, Tunisia and Afghanistan.

Besides the "Mecca Declaration," they approved a 10-year plan intended, among other things, to combat terror and to show Islam to be a "religion of moderation and tolerance."

The Islamic conference, which was founded in Morocco in 1969, appears to have been a discussion club rather than an activist institute, although several members have said they would like to see it act to resolve economic, social and educational problems. Its headquarters is in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

In contrast to most speakers, the president of Iran was silent on terror but accused the West of seeking to destroy Islam.

"They intend to take away Islamic values and replace them with the values of their own choice," Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said.

He contended that the Nazi holocaust in which 6 million Jews plus other innocents were slaughtered was a "myth."

On two separate occasions recently, Ahmadinejad has demanded that Israel either be wiped off the map or the Israelis moved to Europe, the United States or Canada.

Among the speakers in Mecca, the secretary general of the conference, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu of Turkey, was the most direct. "We do not have the luxury of blaming others for our own problems," he said. "Terrorism is a crime that must be renounced by every Muslim."

Prime Minister Abdullah bin Ahmed Badawi of Malaysia, whose nation has been an unwilling haven for terrorists, said the worldwide community of Muslims "could no longer be in a state of denial" but must project "a true image of Islam."

The prime minister of Bangladesh, Khaleda Zia, was forthright. "A terrorist must be identified as a terrorist only, irrespective of his or her color, creed or religion," she said, "We condemn terrorism as such, and in all its forms."

General Pervez Musharraf, the president of Pakistan whose intelligence service was once close to the Taliban terrorists next door in Afghanistan, has taken a new posture: "Senseless acts of terrorism committed by a handful of misguided individuals while claiming to act in the name of Islam have maligned our noble faith of peace, tolerance and compassion."

The host of the conference, Saudi King Abdullah, echoed that, saying that Islamic "unity will not be achieved by bloodletting as the miscreants — in their misguided waywardness — insist on claiming."

Many of the terrorists who mounted the 9/11 assaults in New York and Washington in 2001 came from Saudi Arabia, as did Osama bin Laden, their fugitive captain.

King Mohammed VI of Morocco focused on Iraq, looking to the day when the Iraqis would eradicate Muslim "terror gangs that threaten the lives of innocent people every day," the innocent people being Iraqis themselves.

The Islamic condemnation of terror, however, has sunk like the proverbial stone in the international pond because the organizers of the conference seem to have done little to get their message out, especially to their Western critics.

Brief accounts have been carried by the Associated Press and the press in Islamic nations.

An e-mail to conference headquarters asking what had been done to communicate the findings went unanswered.

Conference reports are at www.oic-oci.org/ex-summit/english/prep-docs.htm.

Honolulu-based Richard Halloran is a former New York Times correspondent in Asia.