for popular support, and so must choose their words with care. Most American voters are not sophisticated enough to understand the intricacies of Arab politics, or patient enough to care. Similarly, most Arab voters do not want to hear about the American constitution, which guarantees free speech and means that the US government cannot just ban crude attacks on Islam by American citizens. The elected Arab leaders will certainly have had this fact explained to them in private by their political advisers, but in public they must demand that the US government suppress the film and punish its makers. It's not the United States that has attacked Islam, or even "Hollywood"; just a handful of Americans with a political and religious agenda. It's not "Egypt" or "Libya" that has attacked American and other Western diplomatic missions in the Arab world, but small groups of Islamic extremists with a political agenda of their own, supported by a larger number of pious dupes. Indeed, the film in question passed without notice when it had its single public screening in the Vine Theatre in Los Angeles in June; only a dozen or so people showed up, probably mostly friends of the producer. It attracted little more attention when a shortened version was posted on YouTube at the beginning of July. It only took off when the religious Egyptian television channel al-Nas broadcast scenes from it on September 8, and then posted a clip online with an Arabic translation. That got hundreds of thousands