There are protesters in the streets all around the world. There have been riots, burnings and lootings, police clampdowns, and attacks on military personnel in dozens of countries.

US flags have been torched and effigies burned. Other western embassies have been targeted. In Benghazi, the second largest city in Libya, the US ambassador and three employees were killed.
This latest carnival of rage and offence across the Muslim world was triggered by a film made by an Israeli-American businessman in California. It depicts the prophet Mohammed as a child molester, womaniser and ruthless killer.
Most people who have bothered to see the ‘film’ are dismissive. It’s a load of rubbish, they say. And its sheer stupidity is offensive. But here’s the rub. Few if any of the protesters have seen the film in question. They are protesting to order. And in their protests, mobs being mobs, and group outrage being what it is, it doesn’t take long for them to go crazy and to do things which are both excessive and wrong.
The ‘protests’ are led by a tiny number of Salafist radicals. They know their constituency – the poor and undereducated masses across the Islamic world – and they also know how to push their buttons. Sometimes – as with the mass murder of civilians by the regime in Syria – outrage is justified. But too often responses are manufactured and hysterical: there is no sense of proportion.
Increasingly, protest in the modern world is viral. An idea or image can traverse the world in moments. If the seed is sown effectively, crowds gather, ripe for manipulation.
There’s a variety of groups out there, not all of them Muslim, who have twigged this. We should know. The Irish are among the quickest to take offence at the merest hint of slight.
Some of these groups are also extremely well networked and know how to exploit the system for maximum impact.
Over the past week, news media have also been carrying reports about the horrible scenario confronting the parents of Rimsha Masih, a 14-year-old Pakistani Christian girl with Down’s Syndrome who was accused recently of desecrating the Koran. She was arrested and charged with blasphemy.
It now seems certain that the evidence against her was fabricated. But she can’t be released from jail now, because – with the ire of the unreasoning mob up – there is no way to guarantee her security. According to her lawyer she will need an armoured vehicle and many bodyguards. Vigilantes are likely to haunt her every move from now on. There are those who wish her to be executed still, who claim that she doesn’t have Down’s Syndrome. Fundamentalists – Christians included – will always distort the truth to achieve their own base ends.
These vigilantes are not much different from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards or the Salafist extremists who are currently destroying Sufi shrines across Libya and elsewhere. Much like the Taliban, these deeply unpleasant people are thriving in the aftermath of Gaddafi’s overthrow, much like the mujahideen flourished in Afghanistan after the Russians left.
If you think this is just an Islamic thing, it’s time to wise up. A Trappist monastery in Jerusalem was vandalised last week by suspected Jewish militants. Closer to home, 60 police were injured while keeping loyalist and nationalist mobs apart in north Belfast. Indeed, as Lady Hog discovered on a recent visit (when she took a Black Taxi tour) the boundary between the sides is still locked and barred every night, peace process notwithstanding.
No, even though certain of the Islamic masses are easily manipulated and mobilised, this is not just a feature of Muslim-dominated countries. It’s found amongst Christians, Jews and Hindus too. Believe me, the Taliban would look watery alongside some American Christian fundamentalists…
The most obvious common thread between all of these groups is ‘faith’ (nationalism often looks like a kind of faith). A person of faith may well be reasonable but she or he is not a person for whom reason comes first. And a man who believes that he will go straight to paradise if he dies in a holy war is clearly a more dangerous man.
But ignorance and lack of education are crucially important too. Likewise poverty. Put them all together and you have fertile ground for fervid religion – and for easy manipulation of the masses.
What can be done about it? Some optimists think that education, employment and economic development will slowly but surely lead the fundamentalist masses away from mono-theism and towards a better quality of enlightenment. Bearing in mind the Irish experience (among others) they might be right. After all, we were dominated by a kind of Taliban for generations. And there were deeply unpleasant instances of mob rule here too.
Equally, they may be wrong. Northern Ireland had billions thrown at it and it’s still heartbreakingly easy to get a mob onto the streets, hell bent on destruction. And look at Australia – it’s a very advanced and prosperous society but there were Islamic rioters on the streets there last week.
Or look at Germany where Anatolian families who arrived from Turkey two generations ago still haven’t (been) integrated into German society. Look at the persistence of arranged marriages among immigrants in the UK. Look at honour killings in Sweden and elsewhere, by people who have maintained their tribal and religious loyalties despite huge investment and support from their new host states…
We’re locked in a cycle. Very powerful forces across various faiths work ceaselessly to suck the mass of ‘believers’ deeper into unreason and ignorance. That way, not only are they controlled, they are also a weapon that can be unleashed whenever the ideologists of unreason see an opportunity.
The war being waged for and against reason is shaping up as the first great war of the 21st century. We need to get our asses in gear…