Two stories follow on a movie created some time ago whose trailer was recently aired in Cairo that represents the prophet Mohammed as a womanizer and was created by a group that included Rev. Terry Jones, the man who burned a Koran in 2011.
The trailer has caused riots there in protest against what Egyptians have called the anti-Muslim bias of the U.S. Government.
Perhaps I can reiterate here that, in my view, it’s time for the world to apologize to Muslims worldwide for the perpetration of alleging they were behind 9/11 when the truth is that the U.S. government of the day, the Bush government, and many other co-conspirators from numerous countries were actually behind it.
I personally do apologize to Muslims around the world for the lie that has been propagated that they were responsible for 9/11 (and my own participation in that lie) and acknowledge that Islam, Muslims generally, and the Muslim populations of various countries like Afghanistan were in no way responsible for the events of that day.
You’re welcome to join me in that apology or to create petitions that invite others to join in.
On this subject, see:
- “This 9/11, It’s Time to Apologize to Muslims,” at http://the2012scenario.com/2012/09/this-911-its-time-to-apologize-to-muslims-2/
- “This 9/11, Vindicate the American Muslim Community,” at http://the2012scenario.com/accountability/911-essays/this-911-vindicate-the-a...
- “What War on Terror?” OpEdNews, Oct. 28, 2008, at http://tinyurl.com/2ujmx9s.
- “To Muslims of America, I Apologize (Reissued),” OpEdNews, Oct. 17, 2007, at http://tinyurl.com/mvlybr;
- “In the Name of All who Died on 9/11, We Must Act Now,” OpEdNews, Sept. 4, 2007, at http://tinyurl.com/32zts6o
Fifteen minutes of infamy: The film that sparked Muslim protests
KC Wildmoon, Storyful, 12 Sept. 2012
http://storyful.com/stories/41135
Ordinarily I would post the video in question, which is a trailer for the film. But out of concern for the sensitivity of Muslim readers, I won’t post it.
However I will point readers to the Youtube site, should they wish to view it for themselves for the purpose of seeing what the controversy centers around.
Please note that the actors concerned have said that they did not say the lines that they are represented as saying in the film. They allege that dialogue has been dubbed in and attributed to them.
I personally suspect that this is a cabal attempt to stir up dissension and conflict.
A video just under 14-minutes long that has been on YouTube since July 2 sparked protests outside US diplomatic missions in several Arabic countries this week. It claims to be the “trailer” from a movie called “The Real Life of Muhammad” or “Innocence of Muslims.” But it’s been available online for over two months. Why did protests only kick off on Tuesday?
The video was uploaded to the YouTube account of one Sam Bacile on July 2, 2012. A shorter version was uploaded on July 1. Neither made the kind of impact we’re now seeing. At least two other versions of the video — one dubbed in Arabic and uploaded to the director’s channel on September 4 and another subtitled in Arabic and uploaded to a different channel on July 18 — were briefly removed from YouTube over a copyright claim but have been restored. YouTube has since temporarily restricted access to the video in Egypt and Libya, citing “the very difficult situation” there.
The protests, however, only began after an Egyptian TV station aired a clip from the video earlier this week:
Credit : elmokhalestv7
The broadcast above, and other Egyptian media accounts, specifically mention Terry Jones, an American fundamentalist known for burning copies of the Quran, and American Copt Morris Sadek. While Sadek’s National American Coptic Assembly does have close connections with Rev. Terry Jones, neither Sadek nor Jones appear to have been involved with the film in any way until last week, when Sadek promoted it the day after the dubbed version appeared on Bacile’s YouTube channel with this blog post.
In the post, Sadek linked the film with Jones’s plans to put the Prophet Muhammad on trial on September 11, 2012. Jones released a video of the “trial” which can be seen here.
Sadek’s connections with Jones aren’t new. The blog post includes this photograph of Sadek (in the red tie), New Jersey doctor Esmat Zaklama, also a Copt, and Jones at a demonstration in Washington in June. Other pictures on Sadek’s Facebook page show him with Jones in 2010, when the American made headlines with threats to burn the Quran.
Credit : Morris Sadek
Though the alleged involvement of Jones and Sadek may have incited protesters, so far it doesn’t appear that either were involved in the making of the film. Sadek only mentioned the film in his September 5 blog post, and Jones did not appear to be aware of the film until after the protests began, when he announced on his Facebook page that he would air the trailer at his “trial”.
@ashrafkhalil I called him: his press person was not aware of it; nothing on his Web site. Then hours later he announced he would screen it
Jones told Orlando, Florida television station WESH that he had been unable to play the video at the “trial” because of “internet problems” and defended his anti-Islamic activities.
Jones said he supports the film and wanted to show it to his congregation, but could not Tuesday because of an Internet problem. The pastor said beyond his support, he was not financially or creatively involved in the making of the movie.
Credit : WESH-TV
Much of the media focus is now turning to Bacile, the name on the YouTube account on which the offending video appears. According to a Wall Street Journal report, he’s a 56-year-old California real estate developer who identifies himself as a Jewish Israeli and claims to have produced, directed and written the two-hour film. But Jeffrey Goldberg from The Atlantic reported speaking to another man alleged to have been involved in the production who told him “Sam Bacile” was a pseudonym and that he was not Israeli:
As part of my search for more information about Sam Bacile, the alleged producer of the now-infamous anti-Muhammad film trailer “The Innocence of Muslims,” I just called a man named Steve Klein — a self-described militant Christian activist in Riverside, California (whose actual business, he said, is in selling “hard-to-place home insurance”), who has been described in multiple media accounts as a consultant to the film.
Klein told me that Bacile, the producer of the film, is not Israeli, and most likely not Jewish, as has been reported, and that the name is, in fact, a pseudonym. He said he did not know “Bacile”’s real name.
Credit : The Atlantic
The search continues, but what is clear is that regardless of the identity of Bacile, it was the names of Terry Jones and Morris Sadek in connection with the video that alerted – and angered – many of those who went on to protest its existence.
Protests at U.S. embassies may be spurred by film
Hamilton Spectator, Sept. 11, 2012
http://www.thespec.com/news/world/article/797627–protests-at-u-s-embassies-may-be-spurred-by-film
CAIRO Protesters in Libya and Egypt stormed U.S. diplomatic missions Tuesday on the 11th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in a day of rage that underscored the growth of fundamentalist movements in countries where new governments were swept to power in the aftermath of last year’s Arab spring.
In Cairo, with a metropolitan population of nearly 19 million, thousands of demonstrators stormed the U.S. Embassy, lowered the American flag and destroyed it, then danced atop the walls in a protest that lasted hours. Egyptian police made no effort to confront the non-violent crowd.
In Libya’s second largest city, Benghazi, protesters stormed the U.S. consulate, setting the building ablaze. Witnesses said they heard loud explosions nearby and that armed men had surrounded the area around the consulate, blocking the road and making it impossible for reporters to film the scene.
One man in Benghazi, who didn’t want to be identified for security reasons, suggested that Islamists were responsible for the attacks. In recent weeks, Muslim fundamentalists have destroyed cemeteries and mosques in Libya associated with the moderate Sufi strain of Islam.
In Cairo, police surrounded the embassy building but made no move to confront the demonstrators as they sprayed graffiti on the four-metre high walls that encircle the compound. One protester tested his spray can on a policemen’s shield before aiming it at the wall; the officer simply shrugged.
The police also made no move to challenge the protesters as they lowered the American flag. As the flag was torn and then set on fire, a man climbed a ladder alongside the flagpole and replaced the flag with one that read, “There is no God but Allah and Mohammad is his messenger.”
Among the chants yelled toward the embassy was “Take a picture, Obama, we are all Osama,” a reference to Osama bin Laden, who planned and financed the 9/11 attacks and whom U.S. commandos killed on May 2, 2011.
State Department officials said their employees weren’t in danger. Most had gone home early in anticipation that protesters would scale the wall around 5 p.m.
The protests were spurred by two impressions among some Egyptians: That the U.S. is anti-Muslim and doing harm to the Muslim world. It was a reminder that Egypt’s first democratic election, which the United States encouraged, has not yet yielded any change among some in widely held beliefs about American interests in the region.
Organizers of the protest at the embassy said they’d begun planning the event last week when a controversial Egyptian Christian activist who lives in the United States, Morris Sadek, released a trailer for a movie called “Muhammad” that repeatedly mocks the prophet and the religion. The 14-minute clip, which Sadek first posted on his Facebook page Sept 5, attacked basic tenets of the Islam and suggested that the religion had spread only because the prophet told those he encountered to “pay extortion or die” if they didn’t convert.
Christians make up roughly 10 percent of Egypt’s population, and officials from Egypt’s Coptic churches have condemned the film.
The film controversy came as a controversial Florida pastor, Terry Jones, whose burning of the Koran in 2011 set off days of rioting in Afghanistan, announced that he planned to put the prophet on trial Tuesday in what he called International Judge Muhammad Day.
In a video announcing the “trial,” Jones, wearing a black shirt with the word “Infidel” printed on it in Arabic, said that he planned to charge the prophet “with being a false prophet, thus leading 1.6 billion people astray.”
The embassy had tried to pre-empt the attack, issuing a statement hours earlier that condemned “the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others.”
McClatchy Newspapers
9/14/2012
Riots Break Out in Cairo over Divisive American Film on the Prophet Mohammed 2012 SEPTEMBER 13
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