Protests Monday turned violent for the first time in Afghanistan and Indonesia over an American film mocking Islam as hundreds of angry men clashed with police, hurling stones and shouting “Death to America”.
The outbreaks of violence were the latest eruptions of anger over the low-budget trailer made in the United States and aired on YouTube that has fanned unrest around the world, leaving at least 18 people dead.
The movie entitled “Innocence of Muslims”, believed to have been produced by a small group of extremist Christians, has sparked a week of furious protests outside US embassies and other American symbols in at least 20 countries.
In Kabul on Monday, more than 1,000 Afghans protested, setting police cars and commercial storage containers ablaze on Jalalabad Road, Kabul police chief Mohammad Ayoub Salangi told AFP.
Between 40 to 50 policemen were “very slightly wounded” by stone throwers and members of the crowd waving sticks, said Salangi, who added that he had also been grazed by a stone.
Burning tyres sent thick black smoke streaming into the sky and rocks littered the road as shopkeepers hurriedly locked up and ran away.
A police official, who gave his name only as Hafiz, said protesters also threw stones at Camp Phoenix, a US-run military base in the capital, but were later driven back.
In Jakarta, protesters hurled petrol bombs and clashed with Indonesian police outside the US embassy shouting “America, America go to hell” in the first violent film protests in the world’s most populous Muslim nation.
Police were seen kicking or dragging away some of the protesters, while one policeman was taken away in an ambulance with his face bleeding.
Jakarta police spokesman Rikwanto, said officers used tear gas, water cannon and warning shots, but did not say whether they had fired live ammunition or blanks.
Many of the protesters were supporters of hardline Islamic groups and were dressed in identical white Muslim garb, an AFP reporter saw.
In Pakistan, thousands of students burned US flags and chanted anti-American slogans in the northwest city of Peshawar, where Osama bin Laden kept a home during the 1980s jihad against Soviet troops in adjacent Afghanistan.
In the nearby district of Upper Dir, adjacent to a former Taliban stronghold crushed in 2009, a protester was killed and two other people wounded in an exchange of fire with police.
Following complaints, Google is barring access to the video in Egypt, India, Indonesia, Libya and now Malaysia, while the government has restricted access to Google-owned YouTube in Afghanistan.
Monday’s violence came one day after the head of the Shiite Muslim movement Hezbollah, blacklisted in the United States as a terrorist group, called from Lebanon for a week of protests.
Nasrallah described the film as “the worst attack ever on Islam” — worse than “The Satanic Verses” by British author Salman Rushdie, who has been under an Iranian fatwa calling for his murder since 1989.
“The whole world needs to see your anger on your faces, in your fists and your shouts,” he said in a televised speech broadcast just hours after Pope Benedict XVI ended a historic three-day visit to Lebanon.
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has also demanded violence against US diplomatic missions in the Middle East and Africa, and on US interests in the West.
The unrest began in Cairo, where protesters stormed the US embassy late Tuesday, replacing the Stars and Stripes with an Islamic banner.
Hours later, the US consulate in Libya’s eastern city of Benghazi came under sustained attack, with four Americans killed, including ambassador Chris Stevens.
Mass demonstrations after the main weekly Muslim prayers on Friday saw 11 protesters killed as police battled to defend US missions from mobs in Egypt, Lebanon, Sudan, Tunisia and Yemen.
The United States has deployed counter-terror Marine units to Libya to protect the Tripoli embassy and stationed two destroyers off the North African coast.
It has also sent a Marine unit to protect the US embassy in Yemen, where police shot dead four protesters and wounded 34 others on Thursday as a mob breached its perimeter.
Hundreds of Yemeni students demonstrated on Monday calling for the expulsion of the US ambassador and condemning the Marines’ deployment, an AFP reporter said.
The United States has evacuated all non-essential staff and family members from Sudan and Tunisia and warned US citizens against travel to the two countries.
And in Afghanistan, two US soldiers died and six US fighter jets were destroyed when Taliban fighters on Friday stormed one of the country’s largest airfields to avenge the anti-Islam film.
Nasrallah described the film as "the worst attack ever on Islam"
Rubbish. It is a pathetic, badly-made rotten film that needs ridicule and laughter, not rage and violence that honours NO-ONE. .
"The whole world needs to see your anger on your faces, in your fists and your shouts,"
No. Rage is easy. Anger is easy. Violence is easy. Two-year-olds can do it.
Mobs can do it without thinking at all.
I've had my beliefs insulted, before now. to respond with rage and violence would just confirm my attacker's view of me. I'm better than that.
What these terrorists don’t understand is that they are showing the entire world a face of Islam that reflects on it’s nations as a whole and it is not a pretty picture of tolerance. How about if America pulls ALL of its support for any country that harms diplomats or any US citizen! And I mean all support, financial, education, health and TRADE! Respect is earned and not just given because you Demand it!
I totally agree with you! If I were Obama, I would pull out any kind of help support to any Muslim country. Leave them alone and let them suffer on their own mistakes.
I have to call the fatwa on this moral malarchy. The Holy Prophet would not care about a Youtube video that nobody watched when 20,000 Syrians have been killed at the hands of Assad. Where is the moral outrage for the murdered Syrians created in the image of God?
These protesters project onto our US government that it is like any other Arab government in the Arab world where free speech is controlled by the government. This contradicts our founding principles of freedom of conscience and expression.
Why is Egypt behind China? When 50 years ago it was leaving China in the economic dust? The Arabs did it to themselves. They, for whatever psychological reasons, relied on Islam to solve their economic and societal problems. These protests are stoked up by religous zealots whom never studied or even read the Holy Qu’ran and have no idea on how to improve Arab society and economic wealth of the Arab peoples.
whatever is it peace and patience is very important
hahaha! You got that RIGHT!!!!
what a bunch of idiots. if i went crazy everytime something on US tv offended me it would be a full time job. what a waste of hatred. give it a rest bozo;'s
The chief culprit of Muslim unrest and violence is not Muslim masses, Muslim Brotherhood but Jihadis-Shilafish and Saudis, who are staging unrest every time when some one raise issue against their ideology.
In really speaking almost all Jihadis belonged to Shilafish or Wahabists ideology of Islam; which has been and being spread around the globe by Saudis petro-dollars. Most of the terrorists belonged to this ideology and the final message of Jihad against non-believers of their ideology that not only include non-Muslims but Muslims too. Their first and foremost enemy is America and Americans; then Shias, Sufis and all other Muslims; who do not follow their anti-Islam message of Wahhabism. BUT UNFORTUNATELY, AMERICA AND THE WEST; even though they know the fact, still would like to enjoy bed with Saudis and their goons and allow them free passport to expand their regime of Wahhabism around the globe. All Al-Qaida members, Taliban and Muslim fanatics are trained by the Wahhabi Schools and are ready to kill or get killed for their ideology. Message of Wahhabism is zero tolerance in if any one is not following their strict anti-social; anti-family, anti-human and ANTI-ISLAM ideology. Rather than wasting billions of dollars on WAR ON TERROR for the last 10 years and continue for another century, America and the West should decide to give an ultimatum to Saudi to stop financing and training such ruthless Jihadis around the globe or they will be wiped out by the international community.
The long-simmering religious war between the West (today represented by freedom of speech) and Islam will eventually destroy civilization. Mitt “Cyborg” Romney stirs it up because he is an agent of the Mormon Church. To gain an existential understanding of the cult that produced Mitt "Cyborg" Romney, and to get your socks scared off, read The Assassination of Spiro Agnew, available in paperback and ebook at: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=sear…
Its unwilling, part-Mexican Mormon assassin dramatizes the Mormon superiority complex, manifesting it as racism, sexism, jingoism and an anti-federal government temperament. His research in the new library reveals ominous similarities between Islam and Mormonism. The spiritual power behind the cult, which is not the Holy Ghost, acts out.
“With a clarity of language and vision unsurpassed in contemporary American prose, Steven Janiszewski's Assassination of Spiro Agnew takes us into a U.S. mazed with madness and Mormonism and all things Utah, a U.S. that was then and still is. Do we need a novel, even as brilliant as this one, about a young man on a divine mission to assassinate the Vice President because he is too liberal? Yes, now more than ever. Readers, welcome to a masterpiece.”
Tom Whalen http://www.tomwhalen.com
Read The Assassination of Spiro Agnew.
Mr. Rushdie would enjoy its post-modern style as much as he would be abhorred by the Mormon experience.
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