More than dozen killed in Pakistan protests over anti-Islam video But as tragic as it was in Benghazi, and today in Pakistan, where more than a dozen Pakistanis were killed and over 200 injured, the number of demonstrators has been small — except in Beirut and Khartoum, where there were about 10,000 each. As an old South Asia hands told me in Pakistan and India years ago: “You don’t have a demonstration until you have at least 100,000, or a million people, in the streets.” The demonstrations should be taken in perspective. When former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto returned to Karachi on Oct. 19, 2007, there were, according to the BBC, over 200,000 people surrounding her caravan. On Sept. 16, “hundreds” of young men, according to Pakistani officials, attacked the U.S. Consulate in Karachi. They were led, according to reports, by Jamaat Islami (The Islamic Party). The attacks in Islamabad were led, according to reports, by Jamiat Ulema-a-Islam (Party of Islamic clerics), both prominent fundamentalist political religious parties tied to the Taliban in Afghanistan. While most Muslim around the world are surely hurt by the trailer, very few are so angry at the U.S. that they are demonstrating and killing fellow Muslims. In Pakistan, demonstrators attacked a Pakistani Press Club in Wari, a small city near the Afghan border, injuring Pakistani journalists. Demonstrators killed a Pakistani journalist in Peshawar. On Sept. 20, in Mogadishu, Somalia, according to National Union of Somali Journalists, two suicide bombers killed three Somali journalists and wounded four others. There have been very few demonstrations in India, the second largest Muslim nation in the world. Why? India is a democracy where people can vent their frustrations at the ballot box. Islam means submission to God. Democracy means rules of man. Al Qaeda and the Taliban, and other fundamentalist organizations, call democracy a western religion. The Islamists demonstrating are angry not just at America, but at modernity, at the secular world, and at democracy. They are few in number. Jere Van Dyk, CBS terrorism consultant, is the author of “Captive, My Time as a Prisoner of the Taliban,” Times Books, 2010.
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