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Peter Bergen

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Extremists and leaders incite violent protests
By Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Analyst, and Jennifer Rowland, Special to CNN
September 13, 2012 -- Updated 1850 GMT (0250 HKT)

Yemeni protesters gather around fire during a demonstration outside the USembassy in Sanaa over a film mocking Islam on September 13, 2012.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
* Peter Bergen: Violence against U.S. over film is part of a pattern of incidents
* He says Christian and Muslim extremists have incited deadly protests for years
* Bergen: In several cases, the words of political leaders have helped spark violence
Editor's note: Peter Bergen, CNN's national securityanalyst, is director of the national security studies program at the New America Foundation, a Washington-based think tank that seeks innovative solutions across the ideological spectrum, and the author of the new book "Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden -- From 9/11 to Abbottabad." Jennifer Rowland is a program associate at the New America Foundation.
Amsterdam (CNN) -- On November 2, 2004,Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was bicycling to work in Amsterdam when he was shot eight times at close range. He died instantly, but in a fit of rage, his assailant, Dutch-Moroccan Mohammed Bouyeri, also attempted to cut off his head with a machete.
Bouyeri killed van Gogh because of a short film he had recently produced with Somali-born Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali that criticized Islam'streatment of women.
The film showed verses of the Quran projected onto the bodies of several naked young women. It was a film designed to provoke. And it did. Ali subsequently went into a self-imposed exile in the United States.
News: Six things to know about the attack
Now, seven years later, a short, amateurish film entitled "Innocence of Muslims," purportedly created by Sam Bacile in the U.S.,portrays the Prophet Mohammed as a philandering child molester. ("Sam Bacile" appears to be a pseudonym.)
Terry Jones, a Christian pastor based in Florida who has a long history of making incendiary statements about Islam, is promoting "Innocence of Muslims." Jones also recently called for an "International Judge Mohammed Day" to be held on the 11th anniversary of 9/11, this past Tuesday.
Newsabout the film has sparked outrage in the Muslim world. Mobs have attacked American embassies and consulates in Egypt, Libya and Yemen. The U.S. ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens, and three of his staff members were killed in what appears to have been a well-organized attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi on Tuesday. The attackers may have used the opportunity presented by the filmprotests to mount the assault.
These attacks came after the accidental burning of Qurans by U.S. soldiers at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan in February sparked massive protests across the country, resulting in the deaths of at least 30 Afghans and six U.S. soldiers, all of whom were shot by men in Afghan security force uniforms.
Opinion: Survivor of 1979 consulate attack -- Libya an eerie echoPeter Bergen
And these are just the latest in a series of violent reactions to the perceived disrespect of the prophet and the Quran by Westerners -- sometimes intentional and sometimes unintentional -- that, in an increasingly globalized world of almost instantaneous communication, has intensified significantly during the past several years. And Muslim extremists as well as Christianfundamentalists in the West have increasingly intentionally amplified this trend.
Politicians and the media in the Muslim world have also played an important, though perhaps unintended, role in stirring up violence in the wake of a number of these perceived attacks on Islam.
A YouTube video of "Innocence of Muslims" that provoked the Libyan mob to attack the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was initially...