I wasn't very much surprised by the objection of many Muslims in the Middle East against a movie called "Innocence of Muslims" as they were trying to defend Islam after the famous anti-Islam movie according to their point of view. In fact, there's many differences in the values between East and West. In America and Europe, freedom and equality come at the first place, especially freedom of speech. In the past, Voltaire was at odds with the French philosopher "Jean-Jacques Rousseau" who said: "I completely dissagree with you, but I'm willing to die defending your opinion!". On the contrary, in the Middle East, we don't respect freedom of speech that much.
However, being so religious, It's so dissaproaved in the Middle East to defame any religion or even criticizing it is. Furthermore, while equality is very important in the West, it's rarely to have in the East. When sheik Khaled Abdallah showed the anti-Islam movie on his Islamic satellite channel, sheik Abu Islam tore the Holy Bible apart in front of the American Embassy, and sheik Wagdy Ghoneim insulted Christians along with thier religious leaders so many times, no body moved. On the other hand, a young Coptic Christian man was arrested for sharing the link of that famous movie on Facebook, and a Coptic Chrisitian teacher was sentenced to 6 years in prison for publishing images insulting Islam as well as the president.
We can see clearly the double standards in dealing with people from diffent religions with four Coptic Christians arrested and judged for insultin Islam and none for Insulting Christianity, though they are much more!
Youtube records showed that "Innocence of Muslims" was viewed only by 500 viewer before it's become so famous. It's jumped up to hit more than 50 million viewers just after the violent reactions.
On the other side, Coptic Christians does the same when they think their beleives are offended. I remember thousands of them demonstrating before St. Mark Cathedral upon publishing offensive pictures of a previous monk as well as during the crisis of Wafaa Constantine. The same violent reaction of the attacks on the American Embassies in Egypt and Lybia. However, Christians may tend to be less violent like what happened when Abu Islam has torn the Holy Bible apart.
There is a big gap between the Eastern and Western civilization that causes those angry people to kill, burn and destroy. Another gap leads other people to demand the United States of America to ban that movie in the American cinemas, and to demand Google to remove its trilar. Such people don't understand that American Constitution grants the freedom of speech and freedom of religions as well. This doesn't mean they are not religious, but rather they respect such rights, and this was clear after many anti-Chrisitianity movies were produced like "The Da Vinci Code", they only wrote articles and produced movies to defend their faith.
Freedom is a supreme value in the West, while oppression, exclusion and discrimination are so popular in the East. The solution in my opinion is respecting the law and prohibit religious descrimination and stop such double standards. We can prevent a book or a movie no more with the internet and satellite channels. Open the gates of freedom before the people to learn how to choose the good things and refuse the bad.
