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Rula Jabreal talks mobs in the Arab world

After last night's show, journalist and author Rula Jabreal continued the conversation with Lawrence O'Donnell about the recent turmoil in the Arab world, and w

After last night's show, journalist and author Rula Jabreal continued the conversation with Lawrence O'Donnell about the recent turmoil in the Arab world, and we thought it was a good idea to film it so you could see it, too.

Presented with a Gallup poll showing a 54 percent approval rating of U.S. leadership, Jabreal quickly added, "Probably in Egypt it will be 60 percent. In Tunisia it will probably be 55 percent. Look, the Arab world is big and vast, and no doubt this administration has turned some things around." She suggested the protests in Africa and the Middle East are reflections of internal conflicts in countries not used to the ways of democracy.

Extremest groups, she said, use Islamic derision, such as that seen in the film "Innocence of Muslims," to incite mobs and make political points.

"They always did it before," Jabreal said. "We didn't know about it because...the regimes, the dictators, they would hammer them and kill probably hundreds of them, and we wouldn't know about it. Today, we know about it because you have an elected government that react to the mob in a different way."