Fallout from anonymously-produced video mocking Islam continues all over Middle East

Less than one hun­dred hours after the eleven year anniver­sary of Sep­tem­ber 11th, Islam­ic fun­da­men­tal­ists have seized upon an anony­mous­ly-pro­duced video that mocks Islam to fan the flames of anti-Amer­i­can sen­ti­ment all across the Mid­dle East… in Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Lebanon, and oth­er countries.

The U.S. Depart­ment of State on Thurs­day issued trav­el warn­ings advis­ing Amer­i­cans against trav­el­ing to Alge­ria or Libya due to recent vio­lence there, includ­ing the attack on the Amer­i­can con­sulate in Benghazi.

U.S. embassies in Tunisia and Yemen have been attacked by angry mobs, although the fall­out was lim­it­ed to loot­ing and some destruc­tion of prop­er­ty because embassy per­son­nel had been evacuated.

The Ger­man and British embassies in Sudan were also tar­get­ed by pro­test­ers there, although again, embassy per­son­nel weren’t hurt.

Under the Vien­na Con­ven­tion on Diplo­mat­ic Rela­tions, which most nations rec­og­nize, embassies are con­sid­ered invi­o­late, and the receiv­ing nation is under oblig­a­tion to pro­tect them from dam­age or impair­ment of dignity.

The vio­lent and dis­re­spect­ful protests we have seen this week have unques­tion­ably been in defi­ance of long­stand­ing inter­na­tion­al law.

The White House said that Pres­i­dent Oba­ma had talked to the lead­ers of sev­er­al of the afore­men­tioned nations where Amer­i­can diplo­mat­ic facil­i­ties were com­ing under siege. The Pres­i­dent spoke on Wednes­day night with Mohamed Mag­a­ri­af of Libya and Mohamed Mor­si of Egypt about the video and the ensu­ing attacks on Amer­i­can diplo­mat­ic mis­sions. Yes­ter­day after­noon, the Pres­i­dent spoke to Abd Rab­buh Mansur Al-Hadi of Yemen.

Sev­er­al pro­test­ers were injured or killed when they clashed with police deployed to pro­tect the embassies, Al Jazeera report­ed.

A major rea­son why the U.S. and author­i­ties in the Mid­dle East are hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty calm­ing down the pro­test­ers is that many cit­i­zens of coun­tries like Libya and Yemen just don’t under­stand or appre­ci­ate what free­dom of speech means.

The U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion guar­an­tees to all Amer­i­cans the right to speak and pub­lish freely; speech can­not be cen­sored sim­ply because a per­son or group of peo­ple finds it offen­sive or hate­ful. Sim­i­lar­ly, the Con­sti­tu­tion guar­an­tees a free press, which means gov­ern­ment can’t decide what gets pub­lished or broad­cast (although exec­u­tives at large media con­glom­er­ates in the U.S. do effec­tive­ly serve as gate­keep­ers for their properties).

These free­doms are not avail­able to peo­ple in the Mid­dle East. Con­se­quent­ly, the con­tin­ued avail­abil­i­ty of the trail­er for the bizarrely-named film Inno­cence of Mus­lims has out­raged adher­ents of the Islam­ic faith, because it offen­sive­ly and inap­pro­pri­ate­ly depicts the prophet Muham­mad (محمد بن عبد الله بن عبد المطلب in Ara­bic) who is con­sid­ered by Mus­lims to be the last of the prophets sent by God to the peo­ple of Earth. The trail­er was actu­al­ly first post­ed months ago, but it was not trans­lat­ed into Ara­bic at the time, which explains why it has only just sparked angry protests. Many pro­test­ers are blam­ing the U.S. gov­ern­ment for the video, not real­iz­ing the gov­ern­ment isn’t respon­si­ble for it, nor pos­sess­es the legal author­i­ty to pre­vent the video from being disseminated.

The Fed­er­al Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion and U.S.-based media have, how­ev­er, been try­ing to ascer­tain the iden­ti­ties of the peo­ple who cre­at­ed the film.

A con­ser­v­a­tive Cop­tic Chris­t­ian liv­ing in Cal­i­for­nia who was pre­vi­ous­ly con­vict­ed of fraud has been iden­ti­fied as one of the key peo­ple involved with the pro­duc­tion and Inter­net dis­tri­b­u­tion of the film.

Though we don’t know the iden­ti­fies or true motives of these peo­ple, it seems prob­a­ble to con­clude — based on what we know so far — that they are a very small group of Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ists whose objec­tive was to pro­voke Islam­ic fun­da­men­tal­ists in the hopes of get­ting atten­tion, or maybe just ignit­ing con­flict and chaos between Chris­tian­i­ty and Islam. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the Islam­ic fun­da­men­tal­ists took the bait, per­haps not real­iz­ing that they were being played.

Hot­head­ed extrem­ists caus­ing trou­ble is not a new phe­nom­e­non; it’s been hap­pen­ing for cen­turies. It pre­dates the found­ing of Chris­tian­i­ty and Islam. But our world is more inter­con­nect­ed than it used to be. An insult — or a deroga­to­ry video — can now trav­el around the world in sec­onds. Speech is not con­strained by dis­tance like it used to be. At the same time, cul­tur­al bar­ri­ers have remained. So it has become very easy for peo­ple to offend each oth­er — even if they live half a world away. That is a very seri­ous prob­lem, because some peo­ple resort to vio­lence when they get offend­ed, as we have been remind­ed this week.