adminAs a nation, America should embark on a serious soul-searching mission to establish where it gets it so wrong regarding its relationship with other peoples of the world. It will find that the answer lies in not-so-much as in its superpower status but the disdain and arrogance with which it treats other citizens of the world.
While ordinary Americans are amazed at the sheer scale of Muslim anger against the airing of the grainy poorly produced footage posted by an obscure independent film maker entitled “Innocence of Muslims”, the reaction by their government to the protests belies a nation drunk on its power and might that it has no respect for other people’s religions and beliefs.
Even as anger mounts and the death toll continues to soar, the offensive video has not been removed from YouTube, further infuriating the Muslims who have scaled up their protests. That the American government has done nothing to have the offending footage removed completely from YouTube is a sad indictment on its respect for and acceptance of Islam as a religion.
It is ironic that on a day Americans were commemorating the September 11 attacks that flattened the Twin Towers in New York, one of their own decided to offend Muslims around the world with an amateurish and unprovoked attack on the revered prophet. The result was unbridled anger from the Muslim community who decided to direct their frustrations on American targets around the world including the US embassies.
It is tragic that there has been loss of life arising from the protests and we regret the death of the American ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens who was killed along with three other Americans when a mob attacked the US consulate in Benghazi. Since then more than a dozen people have died in clashes between protesters and law enforcement agents as the pickets spread around the world.
Washington’s reaction has been to display its military might by dispatching its drones, aircraft carriers and marines to Libya to hunt down the perpetrators of the attack on its consulate. On the diplomatic front, US Secretary of State Mrs Hillary Clinton has at best been bellicose in her coarse statements further infuriating the Muslim world and alienating the US from the few allies it has in that part of the world.
The spontaneous outpouring of the anger against America is a culmination of years of pent up frustrations by Muslims tired of being at the receiving end of Uncle Tom’s military excesses. They have seen their governments toppled and their leaders executed at the hands of Americans based on concocted lies and false claims of dictatorships and weapons of mass destruction.
Schools have been bombed and children killed in air strikes ostensibly targeting Al-Qaeda or some other terrorist outfit. Americans call it collateral damage but to the Muslim world, it is a massacre of the innocent. The Muslim brothers are also aware that the plunder of their resources, particularly oil by Western multinational companies, continues unabated under the current puppet governments installed by the US and its allies.
The YouTube video, therefore, could have just torched a wave of anger whose flames could spread and become a worldwide problem. The US needs to re-examine its foreign policy and ensure that it treats other nations of the world as equal partners and not as playgrounds where it does as it deems fit. Widespread anger against the US will continue as long as Washington persists with its condescending attitude towards nations it perceives as weak and poor.
American citizens and interests will continue to be targets of protesters unless that country changes the way it relates to other countries and their citizens.
The American government should realise that its policies are endangering its citizens and opening the country for possible attack. As Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah said on Monday, the US faces “very dangerous” repercussions if it allows the full video to be released.
Addressing a huge protest in Hezbollah’s stronghold in the south of the Lebanese capital, Beirut, in a rare public appearance, Sheik Nasrallah said the world did not understand the “breadth of the humiliation” caused by the “worst attack ever on Islam”. We sincerely pray that the US was listening.
Online Reporter