A group of about 1500 Muslims staged an ugly demonstration outside the US Consulate-General in Chennai on the evening of September 14, 2012, in protest against a derogatory film on Islam and its Holy Prophet produced by an unidentified person in the US.
A video clip from the film with Arabic sub-titles uploaded on to the Internet has led to a series of anti-US demonstrations by Muslims in some countries of the world, with the demonstrations taking violent form in some places. During a demonstration outside the US Consulate in Benghazi in Libya on September 11, 2012, a small group of heavily armed Muslims launched a commando-style attack on the Consulate resulting in the death of the US Ambassador to Libya and three other US officials.
The involvement of the Ansar al-Sharia (Supporters of the Sharia), an affiliate of Al Qaeda, is suspected in the Benghazi attack. The Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), based in Yemen, is also called Ansar al-Sharia. One does not know as yet whether the Ansar suspected in the Benghazi attack is the Yemeni branch of Al Qaeda or whether it is a different organisation of Libyan roots.
The Bengaluru Police are presently interrogating 18 educated Muslim youths arrested in Bengaluru, Hubli, Hyderabad and Maharashtra on charges of conspiring to assassinate a number of Hindu personalities believed sympathetic to the Hindutva movement. According to the Bengaluru Police, the Muslim suspects in their custody were self-motivated by visiting the web site of AQAP in Yemen, also known as the Ansar al-Sharia.
Muslim fundamentalist organisations in Pakistan and West Asia , including the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the parent organisation of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), responsible for the 26/11 terrorist strikes in Mumbai, had called for world-wide anti-US protest rallies against the film by Muslims after the Friday prayers on September 14. Media reports indicate that there was some response to this call in Jammu & Kashmir. Surprisingly and disquietingly, some Muslims of Chennai appear to have responded to this call after the Friday prayers in a local mosque.
To quote from the report carried by The Hindu on the protest rally in Chennai: