( Shared by Tahir Mahmood)

This article from Foreign Magazine elaborates on the conduct of Salafis in present violent protests;

“If the Arab Spring uprisings were an earthquake in Middle Eastern politics, last week was a major aftershock. The rumbling began in Cairo, where a satellite TV station run by Salafis played clips of an inflammatory film about the Prophet Muhammad. Soon after, Salafi religious leaders called for protests at the U.S. embassy in Cairo, blaming Washington for not censoring a film made in the United States. The pattern was repeated in Libya, Tunisia, Yemen, and elsewhere. Although much has been made of the riots as a response to the film, they are more fundamentally about the nature of the post-Arab Spring regimes, and specifically about who gets to police public morality. Salafis across the region see themselves as the rightful guardians of the public sphere — and are acting to ensure that others see them that way, too.

Although Salafis do not make up a majority of the population in any of these countries, they were able to set the political agendas there for the past week for several reasons. They punch above their weight because of the vast funding they receive from fellow travelers in the wealthy Gulf monarchies, particularly in Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. Each year, millions of dollars flow out of the Gulf and into Salafi charities and satellite channels like the one that touched off the riots. (By comparison, liberal NGOs receive far less support from the wealthy countries in the region.) Salafi leaders spend this money on social programs and proselytizing, handy tools with which to gin up votes or whip up anger at perceived slights to Salafism or Islam.”

Read more;

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/138129/william-mccants/the-sources-of-salafi-conduct

“What kind of a love for the Prophet is this where people are burning and looting?” said Qamar Zaman Kaira, the information minister, in a television interview.

Unfortunately the madness continues. As per NYT 19 people died on Friday in Pakistan in protests over offensive movie. Most of the religious clerks, extreme groups and politicians try to capitalize on this sad saga, took part in these protests and in further fuming this anger. The NYT writes:

Peaceful protests had been approved by Pakistan’s government which declared Friday a national  holiday, the “Day of Love for the Prophet Muhammad,” as part of an effort to either control, or politically capitalize on, rage against the inflammatory video, which depicts the Prophet Muhammad, the founder of Islam, as a sexually perverted buffoon.

By nightfall Geo, the leading television station, was reporting 19 deaths around the country.

Local television networks reported that a mob ransacked and burned an Anglican church in Mardan in northwestern Pakistan. A statement by The Bishop of Peshawar the Rt. Rev. Humphrey Peters said that newly installed computers were stolen before the church was set on fire. There were no reports of killings or injuries to the Christians.

“An attack on the holy prophet is an attack on the core belief of 1.5 billion Muslims. Therefore, this is something that is unacceptable,” said Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf in an address to a religious conference Friday morning in Islamabad.

Mr. Ashraf called on the United Nations and international community to formulate a law outlawing hate speech across the world. “Blasphemy of the kind witnessed in this case is nothing short of hate speech, equal to the worst kind of anti-Semitism or other kind of bigotry,” he said.

Protesters in Karachi burned effigies, stoned a KFC and engaged in armed clashes with the police that left 14 people dead and more than 80 wounded by evening.

“Pakistan is a conservative but not a radicalized society,” said Cyril Almeida, a writer with the English-language Dawn newspaper. “But when the radical fringe is bold enough, it can hold society hostage. And that’s what happened today.”

Imran Khan, the cricket hero turned conservative politician, addressed one of the Islamabad protest rallies, and used to occasion to condemn American drone strikes in the northwestern tribal belt.“There is no end to this war,” he said. Click link below to read more;

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/22/world/asia/protests-in-pakistan-over-anti-islam-film.html?pagewanted=1&_r=moc.semityn.www