Many Muslims around the world have been extremely irate about the newly released trailer “Innocence of Muslims” which portrays the prophet Muhammad as a wicked and backward individual. The awfully made movie featured Muhammad as a troubled sexual fiend who was given the duty of creating a proclaimed fake religion to keep himself busy. The heretical video caused revolts in two dozen countries including Egypt, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Australia, Tunisia, and Libya. The revolts resulted in the deaths of many; including the US ambassador Chris Stevens. Many people accuse Muslims as being overly sensitive about the issue. However, I honestly do not believe that the movie alone caused these revolts. Rather, it was a straw that broke the camel’s back.
When I first heard about the revolts, I instantly thought that the Muslims were horridly overreacting. I cannot count how many times I have heard jokes about religions through various media outlets. SNL and Monty Python, for example, have constant cracks at key religious figures in a humorous light. When I watched “Innocence of Muslims”, however, I realized that it did not contain any humor at all. It was simply made to insult and anger many people by portraying the prophet in a horrible light and bashing the core fundaments of the religion. The horrible production of the film clearly shows that the producers did not care about the quality. It seems to me that they just wanted to produce a clip that would infuriate Muslims across the planet, much like the Dutch Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons did.  They achieved just that.
The movie alone did not have the power to cause these riots. The Middle East has had a very turbulent relationship with the West for several decades. America has been in armed conflict with Middle Eastern countries since the early 90’s.  Due to these frequent conflicts, it is understandable that many Muslims residing in these countries don’t visualize America as a beacon of democracy, but rather as one of oppression. Thus, when they are shown a film that was created in America portraying their religion and fundamental values as vile and outright fake, they react as we saw on the news.
Most of what the Muslims in the Middle East know of America is the military destruction in the name of counter terrorism. When they are presented a film harshly criticizing their religion and prophet, they most likely believe that is the main opinion of all Americans. I definitely believe that the reaction was harsh on the Muslim’s part, especially considering that they are most likely appeasing the producer of the film by acting violently. However, I do not believe for a second that they were brought to this fury just because of a fourteen minute clip.