The other day Richard Drayton asked a number of us on Facebook a provocative question: “…why do you commit the energy and time you do to Twitter?”…

I proffered a number of reasons but chief among them is what i think of as ‘locality’; how Twitter gives you the ability to tune in to any locality you wish as long as there are people from there on Twitter. This means that I’m now in touch with events, opinions and news from Pakistan, that shoulder that was chopped off the torso of India in 1947 leaving the citizens of both countries strangers to each other. Some of my favourite tweeple are the tweeters from Pakistan i follow, chief among them @BhopalHouse. This morning she tweeted the link to the post below which offers a perspective on the rage sweeping through the so-called Middle East that I’m happy to have come across. It offers a neat counter to international media narratives of overheated Muslims succumbing to irrational rage threatening to take us all back to the so-called Middle Ages…

Pakistan’s Day of Moderate Disapproval

“The world has clearly gone crazy. That a lame movie trailer (does the actual movie even exist?) made in the US by some kind of Coptic Christian can induce people to attack branches of KFC or the German embassy in Khartoum is simply too bizarre for comprehension.

So can I just point out the fine example of Pakistan for a moment. This country, usually portrayed as a steaming cesspit of crazy, beard-wearing nutcases intent on destroying the West, managed to broadly treat the “Innocence of Muslims” movie trailer with the contempt it deserved, for the most part ignoring the amateurish provocation for what it was.”

For more look here…

PS: This blogpost was clearly premature. Within a few days there were violent protests all over Pakistan. Read an account of the US consulate being stormed here.