A Canadian Hindu advocacy group says it is planning to screen a controversial film depicting the Prophet Muhammad as a madman, which has led to violent protests throughout the Middle East.

Canadian Hindu Advocacy spokesman Ron Banerjee says he is working to secure a location in Toronto to show the film, which was attacked as anti-Islamic following its release last week.

The movie, shot by a California filmmaker, depicts the Prophet Muhammad as a fraud, a womanizer and a madman.

It has been held up as the catalyst for a fatal attack on a U.S. embassy in Libya and angry demonstrations in Tehran, Yemen, Bangladesh and Afghanistan, among other locations.

Banerjee says the violent protests should not silence the film, suggesting it is a matter of protecting freedom of speech.

“There is an element of standing up for our values. In our society we are allowed to screen films, even if they are offensive,” Banerjee told CTVNews.ca on Friday

Banerjee said they are planning on showing pieces of other movies that are considered offensive to other groups, including Hindus, Christians and Jews.

He said the Hindu community is frequently portrayed negatively in films, but the issue is ignored because they don’t spark violent protests.

“My general message to Muslims is that you should act more like Hindus,” he said, adding that all groups and religions should be treated fairly.

The Canadian Hindu Advocacy has previously protested against the Toronto school board for allowing Muslim prayer inside a public school.

There is a part of article that I find especially ironic:

He said the Hindu community is frequently portrayed negatively in films, but the issue is ignored because they don’t spark violent protests.

“My general message to Muslims is that you should act more like Hindus,” he said, adding that all groups and religions should be treated fairly.

Banerjee is absolutely right that Hindus, who are sometimes portrayed negatively in films, have not engaged in violent protests.

Or at least the vast majority of moderate Hindus. Hindu extremists? Well, that's another story:

I would also note that Ron Banerjee is also a proponent of hindutva, a philosophy that many Indian academics consider fascist in nature.

But the point is that in India, these hindutva are the minority and those who subscribe to the philosophy and who would commit acts of violence in support of it are a minority within these groups.

We could make the same case for Christian extremists like the Aryan Nations and their offshoots. Jewish extremists. Sikh extremists. And, of course, Muslim extremists.

I was in Egypt in 2009. I been in Tahrir Square (I was visiting the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities at the time). It's huge. Given the numbers of violent protesters I was reading about who had occupied the square, I couldn't imagine that they could occupy more than a small corner. That conclusion seems to have been proven to be correct as a camera shot of the square showed a few 1000 at most confined to a small section as other people just tried to get on with their lives. Cairo is a city of more than 20 million people during the day. It's difficult for reasonable people to accept that the actions of the violent protesters mirrored the views of the average Egyptian who might have been justifiably offended by the trailer, but otherwise just got on with their lives.

The actions of the producers of the film, the Islamic extremists, and people like Ron Banerjee simply feed each others' hatreds. We would do well not to allow them to consume us as too.