DALLAS
(CBSDFW.COM) – Protests in
Egypt and Libya may not have been tied to a controversial movie after all. U.S.
intelligence officials think they may have been planned for some time,
especially the attack in Libya that took the life of the U.S. ambassador
there.
How
should Americans sort through all of this to decide what it means? We asked for
guidance from the political science department at U-T Arlington. Associate
Professor Brent Sasley suggests we understand that America doesn’t have the
influence there it once had.
“In
some ways it’s not surprising,” Sasley says of the attacks. “You should take
that America’s moment in the Middle East is changing. That things are never
going to be the same.”
He
believes incidents like this on a smaller scale have been brewing a long time,
especially among the Salafist sect of ultra-conservative Muslims. “And we’ve had
signs that this kind of widepread dissatisfaction has been there for this whole
time.”
He
agrees with U-S officials, that while the Egyptian protest may have used the
film to justify a pre-planned protest, the killings in Libya were much more
sinister and that al-Qaede may have played a role.
According
to Sasley, “It looks like new evidence is coming out that the protests and riots
in Libya are not due to the video and the movie, but that the movie was used as
a cover. These protests were pre-planned, and there may even have been a
pre-planned attack on the consulate.”
Meantime
Mike Ghouse, local spokesman of the World Muslim Congress think tank, cautions
not to condemn the Muslim faith, which he claims is being misused by 1% of its
followers. “Right now, the 1% in Islam are very loud, very vociferous, very
violent; it is a shameful thing,” according to Ghouse.
He
condemns the killings and wants the attackers brought to justice, pointing to a
verse in the Koran which says killing one person is like killing the whole of
humanity.
“But
what these criminals do is wrong. And we, as a society need to not buy their
argument that, ‘I’m doing it for Allah, I’m doing it for Mohammad,’ No! They’re
not doing it for them, they’re getting their frustration out and using this
excuse. We shouldn’t buy that, we should say, ‘You are a damn criminal.’”
A
Muslim himself, he believes even some religious leaders have it all wrong.
“There are idiots out there calling themselves Imams that are issuing
Fatwahs…they’re wrong, dead wrong. Read to me…where do you find this violence in
the Koran? If it is not in the Koran, where are you coming from?”
Ghouse
makes this charge to anyone using his holy book to promote violence. “You can
use any excuse but that is not what your religion teaches; show me in the Koran
that it tells me you can do what you’re doing. If we take that approach we can
find many solutions.”
http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2012/09/12/north-texas-reaction-to-deadly-libyan-protests/
http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2012/09/12/north-texas-reaction-to-deadly-libyan-protests/
