Libyan followers of Ansar al-Shariah Brigades chant anti-US
slogans during a protest in front of the Tibesti Hotel, in Benghazi, Libya,
Friday, as part of widespread anger across the Muslim world about a film
ridiculing Islam's Prophet Muhammad. Mohammad Hannon/AP
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BLOGGER COMMENT: Although I do not support violent re-action because it results in killing innocent people, the maker of this film is nothing but a coward Egyptian/American Coptic full of hatred towards Islam and Muslims for no reason other than the rising phenomenon of the multitude of Egyptian Christians reverting to Islam by their choice. Any other reason brought up is nothing but a fake excuse.
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Anti-American protests continued their sweep across swathes of
the Islamic world today, sparked by a low-budget video deliberately denigrating
the prophet Muhammad that was made in the US. From Mauritania
to Indonesia,
protesters took to the streets in anger over the video, which portrays Islam's
most sacred figure as a sexually loose and ruthless buffoon.
Yet the protests were about much more than the video. They were a reflection
of a deeper, wide-ranging discontent, rooted not only in anger at the US
for such things as its pro-Israel policies, drone strikes, and the Iraq and Afghanistan
wars, but also in frustration at domestic leaders who have not been able to
effect rapid change in the wake of the Arab Spring. Analysts also point to a
wider power struggle under way between mainstream Islamic groups and
ultra-conservative Salafist elements, believed to be behind the Sept. 11 attack
in Libya
that killed the US
ambassador.
"There is a battle going on for the soul of these states," says
Salman Shaikh, director of the Brookings
Doha Center,
contacted in Qatar. "People
are offended [by the movie], but with regard to the Arab world, a lot of it has
to do with internal domestic politics between the Muslim
Brotherhood and Salafism," says Mr. Shaikh.
"It's domestic politics mixed with an attempt to make new nation states
and political systems and institutions that are so vital, he says, arguing that
it's not a coincidence that new governments are being challenged most.
"And that is a pretty heady mix."
US
officials were quick to denounce the video as "reprehensible" this
week, but that was not enough to tamp down the fury felt across the globe.
On Thursday, the high walls of US embassies in Sudan and Tunisia
were scaled and breached by crowds; Salafists in Tunis
replaced the embassy's US
flag with their own black one, and the American school there was set alight.
American flags were torched from Tehran to Amman to Kuala
Lumpur. Egyptian protesters fought street battles with security
forces. In Afghanistan,
which was otherwise surprisingly quiet, an effigy of Barack
Obama was burnt in an eastern province. In India-administered
Kashmir,
the top Islamic cleric told all Americans to "immediately leave"
because Muslim sentiments "have been hurt by these pictures."
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