You know what they say: the pen is mightier than the sword. However, in this case, YouTube trumps all. Many are now aware of the movie trailer titled Innocence of Muslims that became viral on YouTube after it was overdubbed with dialogue denigrating the Prophet Mohammed. Cairo TV stations, funded by Saudi fundamentalists and other Anti-American zealots, seized this crude piece of film and portrayed it as a product of the U.S. government – because clearly the Obama administration abandoned any sense of diplomacy with the Middle East in hopes of gaining a couple million hits on YouTube. Right.
In reality, it seems that the stations broadcasting the video were doing so to put pressure on the fledgling governments of Egypt, Libya and Tunisia. Their goal? To enact laws against blasphemy that would purge moderates and secularists in their respective countries. Yet in this day and age, religious issues are almost always infiltrated by political motives. Middle Eastern resentment towards the U.S. stems just as much from U.S. foreign policy as from supposed Islamophobia. Support of dictatorships, strangulating sanctions, drone strikes and other factors of the U.S.’s troubled history in the region contribute to a deep well of antipathy.
Therefore, wide publicity of the inane trailer added just enough fuel on the fire to spark riots against U.S. embassies in countries ranging from Morocco to Australia. These violent protests contained some of the usual flag-burning, rock-throwing, wall-storming elements that defined many uprisings in the Arab Spring. Right on the heels of the first protest, militants in Libya stormed the poorly secured U.S. embassy, and, using sophisticated weapons and planning, killed U.S. ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other embassy personne.
It is at first hard to tell whether this attack was simply in protest of the movie or was a more organized terrorist attack by an Al Qaeda cell group. It appears to have been both. The president of Libya tried to salvage diplomatic relations with America, and was quick to hold a fringe group of Muslims responsible. He stated that while everyone agrees that the movie is degrading and insulting, he did not advocate a violent response or hold the American government responsible. Overall, the violent attacks ranging across the region are indicative of the rampant instability that has occurred in the wake of the Arab Spring and years of despotism by their own governments – leading to widespread unemployment and poverty, disenfranchisement and disillusion.
It is important to understand that the violence against the U.S. embassies was the work of Muslim extremists, and does not indicate the sentiments of the Islamic population. Events such as these tend to highlight “intolerance” as the distinctive characteristic of Islam, and further boost derogatory stereotypes already so prevalent in American society. Again, the media is the culprit for manipulating information and promoting the theme of a “culture clash,” pitting the East against the West. Just as the Islamic fundamentalists market anti-Americanism, the far right activists in this country market fear and intolerance to push the agenda of American supremacy and jingoism. It is remarkable how one bigoted YouTube video managed to further deepen the sociopolitical Eastern and Western divide.
While this anti-Islamic propaganda was distasteful and disturbing, it is nevertheless protected by the American Constitution. The ability to publish material that is not endorsed by the government is a concept that is still developing socially and politically in many Muslim nations. However, with the advent of modern technology, the ability to control the spread of information is obsolete. President Obama vigorously defended freedom of speech in his recent address to the United Nations saying, “Americans have fought and died around the globe to protect the right of all people to express their views – even views that we profoundly disagree with. We do so not because we support hateful speech, but because our founders understood that without such protections, the capacity of each individual to express their own views and practice their own faith may be threatened.”
Now for some irony: the creator of the YouTube video obviously exercised his right to free speech to promote his own opinionated views. As a consequence of the worldwide riots this instigated, Newsweekpublished a cover reading “MUSLIM RAGE,” which in turn became the basis for a popular Twitter hash-tag. Now the event has become viral once again on the Internet, except this time as a continuous joke. Is this what has resulted from worldwide anti-American violence, culture clashing and political scheming? A Twitter hash-tag? Seriously? Admittedly, they are pretty amusing. The best part? Muslims willing to mock themselves, and especially the extremists that instigated the violence, created the hash-tag. Apparently in this era, cell phones and computers provide the world at your fingertips: a world full of adamant religious beliefs, political agendas, stereotypes and sometimes, a sense of humor. •
You know what they say: the pen is mightier than the sword. However, in this case, YouTube trumps all. Many are now aware of the movie trailer titled Innocence of Muslims that became viral on YouTube after it was overdubbed with dialogue denigrating the Prophet Mohammed. Cairo TV stations, funded by Saudi fundamentalists and other Anti-American zealots, seized this crude piece of film and portrayed it as a product of the U.S. government – because clearly the Obama administration abandoned any sense of diplomacy with the Middle East in hopes of gaining a couple million hits on YouTube. Right.
In reality, it seems that the stations broadcasting the video were doing so to put pressure on the fledgling governments of Egypt, Libya and Tunisia. Their goal? To enact laws against blasphemy that would purge moderates and secularists in their respective countries. Yet in this day and age, religious issues are almost always infiltrated by political motives. Middle Eastern resentment towards the U.S. stems just as much from U.S. foreign policy as from supposed Islamophobia. Support of dictatorships, strangulating sanctions, drone strikes and other factors of the U.S.’s troubled history in the region contribute to a deep well of antipathy.
Therefore, wide publicity of the inane trailer added just enough fuel on the fire to spark riots against U.S. embassies in countries ranging from Morocco to Australia. These violent protests contained some of the usual flag-burning, rock-throwing, wall-storming elements that defined many uprisings in the Arab Spring. Right on the heels of the first protest, militants in Libya stormed the poorly secured U.S. embassy, and, using sophisticated weapons and planning, killed U.S. ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other embassy personne.
It is at first hard to tell whether this attack was simply in protest of the movie or was a more organized terrorist attack by an Al Qaeda cell group. It appears to have been both. The president of Libya tried to salvage diplomatic relations with America, and was quick to hold a fringe group of Muslims responsible. He stated that while everyone agrees that the movie is degrading and insulting, he did not advocate a violent response or hold the American government responsible. Overall, the violent attacks ranging across the region are indicative of the rampant instability that has occurred in the wake of the Arab Spring and years of despotism by their own governments – leading to widespread unemployment and poverty, disenfranchisement and disillusion.
It is important to understand that the violence against the U.S. embassies was the work of Muslim extremists, and does not indicate the sentiments of the Islamic population. Events such as these tend to highlight “intolerance” as the distinctive characteristic of Islam, and further boost derogatory stereotypes already so prevalent in American society. Again, the media is the culprit for manipulating information and promoting the theme of a “culture clash,” pitting the East against the West. Just as the Islamic fundamentalists market anti-Americanism, the far right activists in this country market fear and intolerance to push the agenda of American supremacy and jingoism. It is remarkable how one bigoted YouTube video managed to further deepen the sociopolitical Eastern and Western divide.
While this anti-Islamic propaganda was distasteful and disturbing, it is nevertheless protected by the American Constitution. The ability to publish material that is not endorsed by the government is a concept that is still developing socially and politically in many Muslim nations. However, with the advent of modern technology, the ability to control the spread of information is obsolete. President Obama vigorously defended freedom of speech in his recent address to the United Nations saying, “Americans have fought and died around the globe to protect the right of all people to express their views – even views that we profoundly disagree with. We do so not because we support hateful speech, but because our founders understood that without such protections, the capacity of each individual to express their own views and practice their own faith may be threatened.”
Now for some irony: the creator of the YouTube video obviously exercised his right to free speech to promote his own opinionated views. As a consequence of the worldwide riots this instigated, Newsweek published a cover reading “MUSLIM RAGE,” which in turn became the basis for a popular Twitter hash-tag. Now the event has become viral once again on the Internet, except this time as a continuous joke. Is this what has resulted from worldwide anti-American violence, culture clashing and political scheming? A Twitter hash-tag? Seriously? Admittedly, they are pretty amusing. The best part? Muslims willing to mock themselves, and especially the extremists that instigated the violence, created the hash-tag. Apparently in this era, cell phones and computers provide the world at your fingertips: a world full of adamant religious beliefs, political agendas, stereotypes and sometimes, a sense of humor. •
