The contentious film and cartoons are insults and provocation, but people still have a choice about how to express their disgust
At least 47 people have died in worldwide protests sparked by an anti-Islam video – and that may not be the final toll. One of the latest victims was a driver for a Pakistani television station sitting in his car as rioters torched a cinema in Peshawar. The inchoate violence finishes the work that the makers of this crude, execrable propaganda started. It's all choreographed to the same dog-eared script which pits the Muslim world and western worlds irreconcilably against each other.
America is not exactly an innocent victim. Popular rage in Pakistan, Egypt or Libya has much to feed on. The CIA's use of the Afghan mujahideen during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, its funding of the madrassas, the war on terror, the invasion of Iraq, continuing and expanding drone attacks in Yemen and Pakistan, would lead many to declare a plague on all its doings. Nor is America alone in this. The demonisation of Islam by the far right in Europe stokes insecurity among Muslim populations elsewhere. But someone, somewhere, has to show leadership to interrupt what has become an all too familiar cycle. Each time some far right Christian group presses this button, the balloon goes up. Maybe it should stay tethered. But there is still a need for good sense.
That is what happened in Egypt on Friday, when the main Islamist parties – the Salafist Nour party and the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice party – declared they would not take part in any demonstrations at the French embassy, but took advice from the French prime minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, in forming a joint legal team to take action against Charlie Hebdo for a series of cartoons mocking the prophet Muhammad. No one is telling anyone to turn the other cheek – but Egypt's grand mufti, Ali Gomaa, was worth listening to when he said that the prophet endured all forms of abuse and physical assault without retaliating. The film and the ensuing cartoons are insults and provocation, but people still have a choice about how to express their disgust. Is that best done by attacking the nearest symbols, or by peaceful demonstration and legal challenge?
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton's reaction to the assaults on their embassies have rightly been measured. They have not threatened to pull the plug on US aid. President Mohamed Morsi's forthcoming visit to the UN in New York and a possible meeting with Mr Obama will be all the more difficult for the events of the last two weeks, but at least it is going ahead. We must not lose sight of the strategic aim, which is to support the nascent democracies of the Arab spring. Helping Egypt resume its role as a regional power is too important a goal .