Innocence of Muslims, indeed

I think it is ironic how the videomakers have experienced fame at the expense of Muslims’ innocence. The quality of their work is so bad that they would be chased out by rabid dogs if they ever stepped into Hollywood. But not now, I fear.

Now they’re famous – all because of sentimental, ignorant, emotional and passionate Muslims. If you are lost and still don’t know why I am ‘attacking Muslims’, please allow me to try to explain.

There are millions of websites on the Internet that generate content (videos, articles, photos, etc.) through users. With thousands of submissions each day, they usually push the most-liked or most-clicked content to their ‘front’ pages. This means that if you click on a YouTube video a lot, it will be pushed to the main landing page of their site, get noticed and get EVEN more clicks!

A ridiculous attempt at offending Muslims through the ‘movie’ called Innocence of Muslims would probably never have reached the viral potential it has now achieved if offended Muslims had not talked about it, written about it, or signed petition after petition asking for it to be removed. Silence is the best weapon here – the same way you ignore irritating beggars on Kalma Chowk.

Perhaps you and your friends were not stupid enough to search for the video(s) and view them, but the majority of Muslims give in to their curiosity, clicking-through to the video to see “what’s so offensive about it after all.” You might even have stopped watching it after the first minute or so but your ‘view’ has already been counted in the statistics and given the video an additional viral buzz.

I have received an overwhelming amount of invites through Facebook Causes and other badly designed Facebook applications asking me to sign a petition or support a cause by clicking through, but I refuse to comply – because I probably have 1000+ non-Muslim friends on my list, and I don’t want news of the video (or angry Muslims’ protesting violently) to be made known to them.

But my efforts are always in vain. Thousands of Muslims have already protested over the short film by burning tires, and damaging property – even killing a person who had nothing to do with the making of the film. I am worried that some Muslims will kill themselves when they realize they were responsible for the short film to have achieved headlines across the world.

I understand your intentions were genuine – you could do nothing else but raise your voice, but when you raise your voice, some of us get carried away by emotion and do some stupid things. In fact, when you ‘raise your voice’, you fuel the viral spread, and now, because you got upset and shared it with your friends, your friends are upset too, and their friends are probably also upset – and so on and so forth till such videos become #1 on the “most viewed’ lists.

I hope I have managed to make my point. Maybe next time, Muslims – upon seeing or hearing about something offensive to them – will quietly report it, not talk about it and try their level best not to make headlines. I sincerely think that is the best way to avoid such offensive content to be promoted by Muslims themselves.