Who Is Behind The War Against The Reason?
The murder of the U.S. ambassador in Libya is part of a wider battle being fought by a variety of religious faiths.
The Hot Press Newsdesk, 02 Oct 2012
There are protesters in the streets all around the world. There have been riots, burnings and lootings, police clampdowns, and attacks on military personnel in dozens of countries.
US flags have been torched and effigies burned. Other western embassies have been targeted. In Benghazi, the second largest city in Libya, the US ambassador and three employees were killed.
This latest carnival of rage and offence across the Muslim world was triggered by a film made by an Israeli-American businessman in California. It depicts the prophet Mohammed as a child molester, womaniser and ruthless killer.
Most people who have bothered to see the ‘film’ are dismissive. It’s a load of rubbish, they say. And its sheer stupidity is offensive. But here’s the rub. Few if any of the protesters have seen the film in question. They are protesting to order. And in their protests, mobs being mobs, and group outrage being what it is, it doesn’t take long for them to go crazy and to do things which are both excessive and wrong.
The ‘protests’ are led by a tiny number of Salafist radicals. They know their constituency – the poor and undereducated masses across the Islamic world – and they also know how to push their buttons. Sometimes – as with the mass murder of civilians by the regime in Syria – outrage is justified. But too often responses are manufactured and hysterical: there is no sense of proportion.
Increasingly, protest in the modern world is viral. An idea or image can traverse the world in moments. If the seed is sown effectively, crowds gather, ripe for manipulation.
There’s a variety of groups out there, not all of them Muslim, who have twigged this. We should know. The Irish are among the quickest to take offence at the merest hint of slight.
Some of these groups are also extremely well networked and know how to exploit the system for maximum impact.
Over the past week, news media have also been carrying reports about the horrible scenario confronting the parents of Rimsha Masih, a 14-year-old Pakistani Christian girl with Down’s Syndrome who was accused recently of desecrating the Koran. She was arrested and charged with blasphemy.
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