Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL)
September 21, 2012

Backlash against the anti-Islam film the “Innocence of Muslims” has sparked demonstrations in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Egypt, Libya, and several other countries with majority-Muslim populations.

Though significantly smaller than the protests of 2011 that toppled governments in Tunisia, Egypt, and elsewhere, some of the demonstrations have turned violent and have been marked by attacks on Western diplomatic outposts. The most high-profile attack came on September 11 — the day the protests began — in Benghazi, Libya, where an armed group stormed the U.S. consulate, killing U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens.

For more on who is protesting and why, RFE/RL spoke to academic Olivier Roy, historian and writer Tariq Ali, and author Charles Kurzman.

Olivier Roy: “It’s not true that there is a general ban on pictures of Muhammad. It’s a Salafist view and now the Salafist view is dominant. But if you look at miniatures in the Middle Ages, you had a lot of representations of the Prophet. The story that there is no representation of the Prophet in Islam just doesn’t exist; it’s a modern invention. You can find a huge iconography of Muslim representations of the Prophet, including in Pakistan, by the way. Until the 1960s, you could buy a picture of Muhammad in the shops in Pakistan. It’s only a recent kind of Salafist interpretation.” [READ THE ENTIRE INTERVIEW]

Tariq Ali: “Without a doubt [local grievances against the West play a big part in these protests]. The religion has been politicized. The reason for that, of course, is that during the Cold War the United States was backing most of these [extremist Islamist] groups to fight communism all over the world, especially in the Muslim world. Wahhabi preachers were sent with American approval by Saudi Arabia to create what we now know as political Islam.” [READ THE ENTIRE INTERVIEW]

Charles Kurzman: “I call this a clash of hatreds. Most people do not hate one another and yet these small groups who do hate seem to be able to grab the headlines and get everybody’s attention. Let’s keep in mind that protesting an insult is perfectly legal in most countries, including the United States, and if people want to hold signs or even burn flags, they’re allowed to do that. That is called free speech, and so I do not mind when groups organize to protest a movie. I think that is a sign of political participation.” [READ THE ENTIRE INTERVIEW] Read the rest of this entry »

The past week of unrest and protests across the Muslim world was largely the work of more puritanical Salafists, many of whom harbor as much ire for their own governments as they do the West.

By Vivienne Walt / Tunis | September 21, 2012 | TIME

In a park hidden from the road and strewn with trash, two young Salafist men dressed in the traditional garb of gray tunics and sandals laid out their plan for revenge against the anti-Islam YouTube video out of California, as well as cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in a French satirical magazine this week. In the meeting place they had picked for an interview with TIME on Thursday, the men said they were prepared to wait—years, if necessary—for the right moment to avenge the insults from both the U.S. and France. “We never know when the reaction will be, but sooner or later this revenge is going to be seen by the West, just as we saw with the Danish cartoons,” said Mahmoud, 25, a slender man with black hair, referring to drawings of the Muslim prophet which appeared in a Danish newspaper in 2006—two whole years before al-Qaeda detonated a car bomb outside the Danish embassy in Islamabad in apparent revenge, killing five people. With hardline Islamic youth under tight surveillance since the disastrous attack on Tunis’s U.S. Embassy last Friday, Mahmoud says that devout youth like him will simply wait until the heat is off, before taking action, including possible “jihad.” “We can do anything,” Mahmoud said, “but at the right time and place, under the right circumstances.” Read the rest of this entry »

— Islamic Renaissance Front
The Malaysian Insider
Sep 22, 2012

SEPT 22 — The Islamic Renaissance Front views the recent murders and uproar over the film “Innocence of Muslims” with much sadness and bafflement.

All available facts suggest that “Innocence of Muslims” is not even a film. What is currently known about it was available in the widely circulated YouTube clip which ran for a total of some 13-odd minutes. What is worse, most critics are in agreement on the film’s utterly poor quality — cheap sets, mediocre actors, bad voice-overs and incomprehensible narrative — all of which explains why no one had even heard of the so-called film until Muslims decided to make a fuss about it.

Indeed, the added tragedy is not so much that the film is Islamophobic, which it clearly is, but that the unnecessary attention given to it by angry Muslims, eventually gave the film far more publicity than it deserves. Read the rest of this entry »