The US ambassador to Libya and three other embassy staff have been reported killed by an armed Islamist mob that stormed and set fire to the United States consulate in the Libyan city of Benghazi.
The death of the US ambassador, Christopher Stevens, was reported by Reuters, who had spoken to a Libyan official. It had not been confirmed.
It was not clear if the ambassador was in his car or the Libyan consulate when the attack occurred.
"The Libyan ambassador and three staff members were killed when gunmen fired rockets at them," the official in Benghazi told Reuters.
So what caused such anger?
The mobs involved in both embassy attacks were mainly comprised of Salafis, followers of an ultra-traditionalist approach to Islam that has spread across North Africa as well as much of the rest of the Arab world from Saudi Arabia in recent years.Oh, before I forget, the report is correct. There were two embassy attacks yesterday. The other was in Cairo. Anyway, back to the story:
Although they were not the prime movers in the "Arab Spring" protests, they have become much more visible in countries like Libya where secular dictators have been overthrown.
They are incensed by a film made in America and promoted on Youtube entitled "The Innocence of Muslims" that is intended to expose the "hypocrisy" of Islam. It not only portrays the Prophet, which the religion prohibits, but ridicules him as a homosexual and advocate of paedophilia, and shows him having sex.
[The film] was apparently made by an Israeli-American businessman and backed by Terry Jones, the fundamentalist pastor who previously threatened to hold public burnings of the Koran. A version of the film, which is in English, has been dubbed into Egyptian Arabic and shown on the website of an Egyptian Coptic Christian businessman based in America.You might remember Jones, who is less a minister than he is an attention junkie.
It's important to understand who the players are in that part of the world and the Salafists are deeply problematic. If you want to know more, this book is a very good place to start. We'll talk more about this in the coming days.
2 comments:
The people who committed these acts against innocents are nothing but savages using terror to impose their will on the rest of the world. Anyone who thinks that the fact that these crimes were committed on 9/11 is a coincidence is sorrowfully mistaken.
There can be no negotiating, appeasement or other behavior for dealing with such savages. The bet here is however, that Barry does nothing in response. His foreign policy is worse than his domestic policy and that's saying a lot.
@ Anon--Ask anyone in the outlying provinces of Pakistan how much of an appeaser the current president is.
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