Gwynne Dyer: Outrage over Innocence of Muslims will prove to be a tempest in a teapot

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      One of the first scenes in the ridiculous but thoroughly nasty film Innocence of Muslims shows angry Muslims running through the streets smashing things and killing people. So what happens when a clip from the film dubbed into Arabic goes up on the Internet? Angry Muslims run through the streets smashing things and killing people.

      It’s as simple as that: press the right button, and they’ll do what you want. Some Christian extremists set out to provoke Muslim extremists into violence that would discredit Islam in the eyes of the West—and it worked, of course. As the U.S. consulate in Benghazi burned and the American dead were carried out, many people in the West thought to themselves: “The Libyans are biting the hand that freed them.”

      Wrong conclusion. It wasn’t “the Libyans” who broke into the Benghazi consulate and murdered the U.S. ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens; it was a heavily armed band of Islamic extremists. “The Libyans” recently voted in their first real election ever, and they elected a secular government. The film just gave the fanatics an opportunity to undermine that choice.

      Maybe the Christian extremists don’t understand that their film serves the purposes of those who want to overthrow the moderate, democratically elected governments, both Islamic and secular, that have come to power in the “Arab Spring”. Or maybe they do realize that, and hope that the violence that they are stirring up will bring Muslim extremists to power in those countries. After all, it’s easier to mobilize western opinion against outright fanatics.

      The grownups try to keep the situation under control. Grand Mufti Sheik Abdel-Aziz al-Sheik, the highest religious authority in Saudi Arabia, said that Muslims should denounce the film, but without anger: “Muslims should not be dragged by wrath and anger to shift from legitimate to forbidden action, [as] by this they will, unknowingly, fulfill some aims of the film.”

      Exactly so, but the leaders of the Arab world’s post-revolutionary governments have to walk a fine line, denouncing both the film and the violent protests against it. Moderate Islamic governments like that of Egypt’s president Mohamed Morsi have a particularly tricky task, since they are competing with the Muslim extremists who are organizing the protests for the support of the same pious and socially conservative bloc of voters.

      “We Egyptians reject any kind of assault or insult against our prophet,” Morsi said on September 13, “but at the same time we firmly say that this cannot be taken as a justification to assault consulates or embassies and cannot be taken also as a justification for killing innocent people.”

      It was not a sufficiently robust condemnation of the violence for U.S. president Barack Obama, who said on the same day: “I don’t think that we would consider [Egypt] an ally, but we don’t consider them an enemy.”

      Obama has his own right flank to protect, and cannot afford to acknowledge in public that elected Arab leaders are in competition with Islamic fanatics for popular support, and so must choose their words with care. Most American voters are not sophisticated enough to understand the intricacies of Arab politics, or patient enough to care.

      Similarly, most Arab voters do not want to hear about the American constitution, which guarantees free speech and means that the U.S. government cannot just ban crude attacks on Islam by American citizens. The elected Arab leaders will certainly have had this fact explained to them in private by their political advisers, but in public they must demand that the U.S. government suppress the film and punish its makers.

      It’s not the United States that has attacked Islam, or even “Hollywood”; just a handful of Americans with a political and religious agenda. It’s not “Egypt” or “Libya” that has attacked American and other western diplomatic missions in the Arab world, but small groups of Islamic extremists with a political agenda of their own, supported by a larger number of pious dupes.

      Indeed, the film in question passed without notice when it had its single public screening in the Vine Theater in Los Angeles in June; only a dozen or so people showed up, probably mostly friends of the producer. It attracted little more attention when a shortened version was posted on YouTube at the beginning of July.

      It only took off when the religious Egyptian television channel Al-Nas broadcast scenes from it on September 8, and then posted a clip online with an Arabic translation. That got hundreds of thousands of views in a matter of days, and the violent protests began almost at once. The Christian fanatics and the Muslim extremists are, in the old Marxist phrase, “objective allies”.

      This is not a “turning point” in western relations with the Arab countries or the broader Muslim world (as some excitable commentators have suggested). The whole thing will blow over after a little while, just like the violent protests against Danish newspaper cartoons about Muhammad did six years ago. It is a tempest in a teapot.

      Gwynne Dyer is an independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.

      Comments

      20 Comments

      Jerry Eberts

      Sep 17, 2012 at 12:37pm

      Religion is such a comfort.

      Mike G

      Sep 17, 2012 at 3:29pm

      Make up your mind - if Egypt is now a democracy, its police should control the mob, any mob, esp. a small extreme group who wants to blow up things because of movies.

      if the extreme group is so heavily armed and loved by the people that the Egyption president needs to talk softly to pease them, this ain't no democracy.

      Either way, a world where some group limit everyone's free speech by switching to violance whenever they feel "enraged" is not a world I want to live in. Do you?

      blueheron

      Sep 17, 2012 at 4:12pm

      I've read that the 'Christian fanatics' who made the film are Egyptian immigrants to the USA. Do you know if this is true?

      Anton

      Sep 17, 2012 at 8:02pm

      It was better than Twilight

      HellSlayerAndy

      Sep 17, 2012 at 10:30pm

      'Christian extremists' made the film?
      Proof?

      Sorry Gwen but you could have done a quick google and checked some of the facts before deadline.

      No evidence of a film...no evidence it was shown at the Vine Theatre, only a poster in a closed movie house...the identified filmmaker, as reported, was identified as a Federal informant in US court cooperating with the Feds to reduce his own check scam in 2010.

      Gwen you personally know tons and tons of educated people from the ME and also have access to the internet and resources most average people don't have, why would you write such insane garbage.

      Stevens was killed at the Embassy with one other...but the other two were killed when they were evacuated to a Benghazi safe house...the American safe house was comprised... killed the two others and 12 -17 were injured in a two hour gun battle????

      It certainly WAS NOT 'religious idiots' stoked by a movie poster and a YouTube video; it was professional hit and even after a week the Libyan government is standing by it's original statements from last Wednesday and only YESTERDAY the US State department admitted as much...

      So without the 'US killings'...that leaves idiots like Gwen and scum like him with...protests outside US Embassies (no shit, happens everyday, esp on Sept 11!!) caused by Islam!

      In other news Gwen...explain QE3 and why the US political system quietly announced that little bombshell during an election while tired old hacks like you wheeze on about the 70 virgins myth and why super duper Mormon HedgeFund wonks and Teabaggin' Randians like super sidekick Ryan wanna talk about...oh they hate us for our freedoms.

      So Camp Bastion got smucked with lots of casualities...were the Taliban responding to a movie poster or the DRONE ATTACK four days earlier that killed a bunch of innocent people.

      Fuck this Shit and Fuck You.
      Stop the War Machine
      Let's Get Out of Afghanistan, Save Money and Improve OUR Country!!!

      lolwut?

      Sep 18, 2012 at 7:19am

      Hey Mike G, make up YOUR mind... is the USA a democracy or not?

      if the evangelical right is so heavily armed with voting power that the America president needs to talk softly to pease them, show up to church once in a while, and be careful not to say a politically sensitive issue that might be deemed as "not supporting our boys (troops)", bending over backwards to compete with a rival candidate on who is a bigger and better friend of Israel, this ain't no democracy.

      nitroglycol

      Sep 18, 2012 at 4:14pm

      Blueheron: That's what I heard; the guy who most now think is "Sam Bacile" is a Coptic Christian from Egypt.

      And note that he claimed to be Jewish in the promotion of the film; presumably he hopes that one group of people he hates (the Muslims) will attack another group of people he hates (the Jews).

      @HellSlayerAndy

      Sep 18, 2012 at 8:55pm

      your rambling (I can't even call it an opinion) must be a poe. or are you for real?

      Issac Chandler

      Sep 18, 2012 at 10:48pm

      "guarantees free speech and means that the U.S. government can't just ban "

      I have read about Americans going to jail for producing/uploading 5 minute YouTube videos.Video taping police abuse or factory farms is illegal in some states...The State of Emergency that America has been living under for over a decade, gives the president the power to indefinitely detain Americans in military custody or even assassinate them:
      http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuity_of_Operations_Plan#section_2

      Hans Rosloot

      Sep 19, 2012 at 2:57am

      Gwynne Dyer missed the mark by light years, Egypt is no Democracy - the brotherhood run it. nuts with guns, and when will Islam take responsibility for there own actions. Christians never forced them to act like wild dogs without a brain. Hopefully Gwynne Dyer will do a bit of research before printing garbage next time. Oh and just for the body count, Islam has slaughtered 270 million people in 1400 years, so the USA has a bit of catching up to do.