Misdirection

So on this year's 9/11 there was a string of assaults on US embassies. Many missed the date based significance and odd coordination of efforts and took at face value the claim that the assaults were over some obscure, racist video on the internet. It feeds into our view of Muslims as violent, and while the number of violent acts in response to "offensive" religious imagery by Muslims is certainly far greater in recent years (see the Onion article) than the equivalents by other religions, it seems like an obvious misdirect in this case.

Perhaps there were some who showed up in those crowds because of the video, but the outrage was manufactured. Someone was deliberately making some point, using violence. It would be a massive coincidence if after a relatively calm period in the countries in question, many of which had their own far bigger problems to deal with like Libya and Egypt, for all of these attacks to happen on the same day. A day which happened to have its own significance as well. Even my gut reaction was one of anti Islamic sentiment, but looking again it seemed to be less a generalized Muslim cultural issue and more of a last ditch effort by a dying islamist group.

Not much else, just thoughts on not trusting your gut all the time.

Logic Priest