The film
claims Muhammad was a fraud. An English-language 13-minute trailer on YouTube
shows an amateur cast performing a wooden dialogue of insults disguised as
revelations about Muhammad, whose obedient followers are presented as a cadre
of goons.
It depicts Muhammad as a feckless philanderer who approved of child sexual abuse, among other overtly insulting claims that have caused outrage.
Bacile's
film was also dubbed into Egyptian Arabic by someone he doesn't know, but he
speaks enough Arabic to confirm that the translation is accurate, the AP
reported. It was made in three months in the summer of 2011, with 59 actors and
about 45 people behind the camera.
The full
film has been shown once, to a mostly empty theater in Hollywood earlier this
year, said Bacile.
Religion as pretext or
cause in attacks in Egypt and Libya
Commenting
on the Libyan attack in Washington Post, the Rev. Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite,
a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, wondered if religion was a
pretext or cause in the attacks in Egypt and Libya were: "Reportedly, the
flashpoint was a YouTube trailer of a "wooden," amateurish movie by an Israeli
filmmaker based in California. This film purportedly attacks Islam, and
particularly the Prophet Muhammed, through insulting depictions. The filmmaker,
Sam Bacile, admitted, "This is a political movie."
She went on
to say: Yes, it is a political movie, of course, but one that manipulates
religious sentiment for the sake of promoting conflict. Indeed, there is an
"Abrahamic religions," that is, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, aspect to this
blow up as the film was languishing and had played only once to a mostly empty
theatre until "a controversial Egyptian Christian activist who lives in the
United States, Morris Sadek, started promoting Bacile's film."
Thistlethwaite
was of the view that the use and abuse of religion for political gain is not
the exclusive prerogative of those who live in the Middle East. "Republican
presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, either intentionally or unintentionally,
inflamed the situation, by "jumping the gun" before all the facts were known.
He repeated the charge that it was a "disgraceful statement" to "apologize for
American values" the next day, promoting a falsehood that somehow President
Obama sympathized with Islamic militants."
The use and abuse of religion for political gain is alive and well in the U.S. and it is well to recognize and reject all forms of this kind of manipulation, Thistlethwaite argued.
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