Op-Ed: Innocence of Muslims movie a fraud?

The movie has enraged Muslims around the world, understandably enough. It’s yet another cheap shot at Islam, for no obvious reason. How many people make a movie, then decide “Oh, yeah, let’s go defame somebody’s religion.” The odd thing about it is that the makers of the movie were very quick to disappear. They clearly knew what the result was likely to be, and vanished. One of the moviemakers, an Egyptian, has a previous fraud conviction, appropriately enough. Which raises the question- The movie was an obviously deliberate attempt to offend Muslims, but by who? The effect was spectacular. There haven’t been so many anti-American mobs on the street in the Islamic world for years. American flags appeared for burning in large numbers. The reaction was obviously well-organised and clearly scripted, from the regular chants of the mobs, like “Obama we are all Osama”. The demonstrations have also been quite lucrative for some. Instead of messing around with mere politics, an American school was looted of all its laptops and then set ablaze. Apparently being offended comes second to some basic free shopping with some mobs. It also helps set back literacy in that area, another classic mindset of some extremist groups. One noticeable fact is that radical Islam is clearly losing its momentum as a global force. The big demonstrations of the last decade have largely evaporated. The various nations have their own problems. The war with America is being continually bumped off the top news items by grim local news. An enemy, real or imaginary on the other side of the world isn’t the same as a car bomber a block away blowing up pilgrims. So- Who “benefits” from a movie designed to offend Muslims? The short answer is every extremist group. Recharging the rage is about the only way they have to stay relevant. They return to leadership roles, rather than members of small time local factions. For those who don’t know much about classical thinking, this was pretty clever stuff, thousands of years ago. Rage is created and focused anywhere but on the local issues. “Leaders” emerge to fan the flames and the popularity of those leaders, naturally, goes sky high. The Innocence of Muslims could well have been called "The Naiveté of Everybody”. There’s no particular reason, and certainly no good reason, to make a low budget film simply to attack Islam. It’s hardly likely to be a best seller, but it’s very likely to make a lot of noise. That’s about the only working justification for the whole exercise. The clincher- It doesn’t make any sense at all for an anti-Islamic group to give Islamic extremists so much ammunition, particularly members of non-Islamic groups in the Middle East. They’d have known that the movie would result in exploitation by the extremists, giving them an excuse to go on the rampage and reclaim their lost status as leaders. The other clincher- This one is almost invisible. Non-extremists in Islam haven’t been part of the hysteria at all. They’ve taken the more mature global view, and from their statements seem sceptical of the validity of such an obvious provocation out of nowhere. Looks like they know the rabble-rousing techniques all too well and aren’t going to play that game. They’ll condemn the movie, but not get on the bandwagon/gravy train with the extremists. The world should be less trusting of its attention-getters. This was a publicity stunt, one way or another. The usual culprits are those with the most to gain. A proverb of sorts- He who makes the most noise is he trying to drown out the screams.