U.S. on alert for Islamist anger to “Zero Dark Thirty”

Muslims have expressed outrage in response to the anti-Islam video “Innocence of Muslims,” the unintentional burning of Korans and a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper.

Although “Zero Dark Thirty” doesn’t enter into any of that territory and nothing suggests a similar chain of events will follow the film’s release, a senior defense official said U.S. forces are always on alert. …

Yet fears of a violent backlash against “Zero Dark Thirty,” which goes into wide release in the U.S. on Jan. 11, are swirling in some corners of Washington and appear to be accentuated by a public perception of a U.S. government consultative role in pre-production research for the film.

Radical corners of the Muslim world have been known to fan the flames around perceived official U.S. involvement with material considered blasphemous, as happened this autumn in Egypt. Protesters infuriated by the “Innocence of Muslims” stormed the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, then tore down the American flag and briefly replaced it with an Islamic banner.