You're reading: Poll: Nearly 40% of Russians justify Islamic anger with Innocence of Muslims

Moscow - Sixty-two percent of Russians are aware of the Innocence of Muslims scandalous film released in the United States. Thirty-three percent of them have heard a lot about the film, and 6% are monitoring the situation closely, the Levada Center told Interfax. 

Thirty-nine percent of the respondents learned about the film in the poll of 1,601 persons in 45 regions of Russia on September 21-24.

Forty-four percent of the respondents said they wanted to see that film, and 47% refused to do that.

Thirty-nine percent of the respondents said that Islamic protests against the film were founded, 27% said it would be hard to call the protests founded, and 11% said that the protests had no excuse. Twenty-three percent of the respondents could not answer the question.

Fifty-six percent agreed that “it served right the Americans, who bore consequences of the Arab Spring they had inspired.” Eighteen percent expressed a different opinion.

Russians were divided over the refusal of the YouTube management to remove the video from the video hosting site. Forty percent sided with the YouTube position, 41% opposed it, and 29% could not answer the question.

The Innocence of Muslims film triggered a series of protests throughout the Islamic world. There were pogroms and burning of the U.S. flag.

The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office said it was determined to ban the film distribution in the country. The access to YouTube has been blocked repeatedly in various regions of Russia. Pavel Durov, the owner and founder of the Vkontakte social network, removed the film from the social network on September 27 without waiting for court hearings on the film’s ban to begin.