Violence across the Middle East in response to a controversial film has stunned the rest of the world, forcing nations to address cultural differences below the surface.

Riots in Libya late Tuesday led to the killing of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and several staffers. Since then, protests have spread from Egypt and Libya to Indonesia and Lebanon. The U.S. embassies in Tunis and Yemen both came under attack, and protesters gathered outside a number of other posts to express outrage and call for action from national leaders. The Associated Press reported from Jakarta Monday:

Demonstrators burned a picture of President Barack Obama and also tried to ignite a fire truck parked outside the embassy after ripping a water hose off the vehicle and torching it, sending plumes of black smoke billowing into the sky. Police used a bullhorn to appeal for calm and deployed water cannons and tear gas to try to disperse the crowd as the protesters shouted "Allah Akbar," or God is great.

"We will destroy America like this flag!" a protester screamed while burning a U.S. flag. "We will chase away the American ambassador from the country!"

The Egyptian cleric and talk show host responsible for first airing clips in his country from the film "The Innocence of Muslims" said he was "shocked" by the sustained rage that has come as a result. 

During the show, Khaled Abdallah presented the clips in what appeared to be an effort to start a dialogue. "I hope other media and TV will discuss this film," he said at the time. "There is nothing as important in our life as the prophet and we defend the prophet."

From ABC News:

Abdallah said today that the rage aimed at the U.S. had been simmering for years and had boiled over when people saw the movie. He hasn’t shown clips from the movie again.

The New York Times touched on that cultural conflict in a piece Monday. 

From the Times:

“We want these countries to understand that they need to take into consideration the people, and not just the governments,” said Ismail Mohamed, 42, a religious scholar who once was an imam in Germany. “We don’t think that depictions of the prophets are freedom of expression. We think it is an offense against our rights,” he said, adding, “The West has to understand the ideology of the people.”

Even during the protests, some stone throwers stressed that the clash was not Muslim against Christian. Instead, they suggested that the traditionalism of people of both faiths in the region conflicted with Western individualism and secularism.

According to the Times, it's a commonly held belief in Egypt that denying the Holocaust is illegal in the United States. The Times piece points out that such a declaration is in fact protected under the right to free speech. Still, protesters consider this an imbalanced treatment. In a statement Tuesday, Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader Mohamed Badie called for the "criminalizing of assaults on the sanctities of all heavenly religions."

Again, from the Times:

“Otherwise, such acts will continue to cause devout Muslims across the world to suspect and even loathe the West, especially the U.S.A., for allowing their citizens to violate the sanctity of what they hold dear and holy,” he said. “Certainly, such attacks against sanctities do not fall under the freedom of opinion or thought.”

Several protesters said during the heat of last week’s battles here that they were astonished that the United States had not punished the filmmakers. “Everyone across all these countries has the same anger, they are rising up for the same reason and with the same demands, and still no action is taken against the people who made that film,” said Zakaria Magdy, 23, a printer.

But if social media sentiment is any indication, those in the West have been less than understanding. Twitter users spoke out on Monday, just shy of a week after the riots erupted.

[View the story "Western Reaction To Middle East Protests" on Storify]

Read more of Neon Tommy's coverage of the protests here.

Reach Executive Producer Catherine Green here; follow her here.