Innocence of Muslims

Belgium on high alert ahead of anti-Muslim film’s release

Belgium has heightened its terror alert level ahead of the release of another highly provocative film exploring Islam, reportedly made in cooperation with the notorious Koran-burning US pastor Terry Jones.

The film’s creator is Pakistan national Imran Firasat, a former Muslim who now lives in Spain. Firasat said he aims to expose the truth of the life of the Prophet Muhammad with ‘The Innocent Prophet: Life of Muhammad from the Point of View of an Ex-Muslim.’

“If we want to know the truth of Islam, we must go deep into the life of Muhammad to find out whether he was a genuine profit sent by God or was he simply a child molester, assassin and a self-proclaimed prophet,” he said in the film’s trailer.

Firasat also hailed pastor Terry Jones as his inspiration. Jones wrote on his website, “It is our hope and desire that we can present a picture of Muhammad that has possibly not been revealed in the past, that will help people in the Western world, and even Muslims, to better understand this person called Muhammad, his life and teachings.”

Jones is infamous for his incendiary anti-Islam speeches, and for staging a ‘Koran-burning day’ on the 10th anniversary of 9/11.

’The Innocent Prophet’ is expected to be a highly provocative film; Belgian police have raised the country’s ‘terrorism alarm’ level from 2 to 3, the second-highest, ahead of the film’s online release on December 14.

The Belgian Interior Ministry said it was increasing the level to ‘serious threat’ as a precautionary measure, Flanders News reported.

Police units in areas with large numbers of Middle Eastern and North African immigrants are reportedly on alert. Technical divisions of the Belgian police force have also been ordered to closely monitor Islamist websites and mass text messages.

In response to Belgium’s heightened terror allert, Firasat said he might postpone the release of the film so it could be previewed by authorities to ensure “there is nothing in this movie which doesn’t fall under the right of freedom of expression and that my movie will not cause any kind of loss to humanity.”

“The necessary modification will be also made if requested by the authorities,” he wrote on trailer’s YouTube page. Still, Firasat insisted he is not afraid of “Islamic violence,” and that postponing the release is a token of respect “towards Europe, which is my family.”

Earlier this year, riots broke out in Belgium after the notorious American-made video ‘Innocence of Muslims’ went viral on the web, sparking violent anti-US protests throughout the Arab world.

Kate, Muslims and freedom of speech

by Karin Roodt

The French government has refused to allow a protest against the American-made film “Innocence of Muslims” planned for this coming Saturday. The march was triggered by the satirical anti-Muslim cartoons that had appeared in the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

The cartoons show the Muslim prophet in naked form.

About 150 people have been arrested in Paris over the weekend, while French embassies and schools in at least 20 countries have been closed. France also had to hastily deploy tanks in Lebanon to protect their missions.

Mohammed Moussaoui, President of the French Muslim Council told Le Monde newspaper that he “was deeply concerned about this irresponsible act that could only exacerbate tensions and provoke damaging reactions”.

On the other side of the Channel, British lawyers concentrated on limiting freedom of expression after the publication of naked pictures of Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge.

The context and public responsibility of the two cases are clearly diametrically opposed, if one takes the risk of public violence into account. By choosing such satirical images the French magazine poured fuel on the fire, and endangered people’s lives.

In addition, the Western insistence on certain freedoms is one that is foreign to other cultures and the whole affair has the hallmark of a clash of civilisations ignored by the mainstream media. Not to mention the double standards applied to the British monarchy on the one hand and to Muslims on the other.

Let the advocates of unlimited freedom of expression pay the price for it. That is the only way in which they will brought under the impression of the limits to multiculturalism.

(Translated from the Afrikaans).

Kabul bomber kills 12 people, including 8 South Africans

A female bomber killed 12 people in Kabul on Tuesday in the deadliest single attack over an anti-Islam US film that again sparked furious protests across the Muslim world.

The Kabul bombing brings to more than 30 the number of people who have been killed in a violent backlash over a YouTube trailer for the film, “Innocence of Muslims”, believed to have been produced by a small group of extremist Christians, which depicts the Prophet Mohammed as a thuggish womanizer.

Another potentially explosive publication is also due to hit news stands in France Wednesday after the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo confirmed that its next edition contains several cartoons which feature caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed.

The editor of the weekly, originally a cartoonist who uses the name Charb, said the images would “shock those who will want to be shocked”.

In Afghanistan, Hezb-i-Islami, the second largest insurgent group after the Taliban who have been fighting US-led troops and the government for 10 years, claimed the attack and said it was to avenge the “insult” of the film.

“The bombing was in retaliation for the insult to our Prophet,” spokesman Zubair Sidiqi told AFP in a telephone call from an undisclosed location.

Security officials said nine foreigners including South Africans were among those killed on a major highway leading to Kabul airport when the bomber blew up her station wagon alongside a minivan carrying foreign workers.

Taliban fighters last week stormed a British-run airfield, killing two US Marines and destroying six US fighter jets in another act of vengeance.

A week of angry violent protests outside US embassies and other American symbols in at least 20 countries have left some 19 people dead, including the American ambassador to Libya and three other US diplomats in Benghazi.

In Lebanon, the head of Shiite Muslim movement Hezbollah, which is blacklisted in the United States as a terrorist organisation, made a rare public appearance to warn of “very dangerous” repercussions if the entire film is released.

Tens of thousands of demonstrators poured into the streets of southern Beirut to denounce the film at the request of Nasrallah, who has called for a week of protests over the film, describing it as the “worst attack ever on Islam”.

“The US must understand that releasing the entire film will have dangerous, very dangerous, repercussions around the world,” he told the rally.

Al-Qaeda’s franchise in North Africa urged Muslims to storm US embassies and kill American envoys in Muslim countries to protest the film, monitoring group IntelCenter said.

The film-maker Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a 55-year-old Egyptian Copt and fraudster who was sentenced to 21 months in prison in the United States in June 2010, has not been seen since Saturday when he was questioned.

The risks now facing those involved in the production of the film were underlined when a Salafist cleric in Egypt called Monday for the deaths of all those involved in its making.

Before dawn on Monday, officers from the Los Angeles County sheriff’s department escorted four members of Nakoula’s family to join him in hiding.

Meanwhile Egypt’s public prosecutor has ordered that seven US-based Egyptian Copts be tried over their role in the film, accusing them of “insulting the Islamic religion, insulting the Prophet (Mohammed) and inciting sectarian strife”.

In Pakistan, two protesters died after demonstrating against the film in the northwest, close to the Afghan border, and outside the US consulate in Karachi.

Police used tear gas to disperse a crowd of more than 2,000 protesters trying to reach the US consulate in the city of Peshawar, chanting anti-US slogans and burning the Stars and Stripes flag.

In Indian Kashmir hundreds of Muslims clashed with security forces and burnt a police vehicle.

Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan blocked access to YouTube, following the video-sharing website’s failure to take down the anti-Islam film. Saudi Arabia and Russia may also follow suit.

Google, which owns YouTube, has also barred access to the film in Egypt, India, Indonesia, Libya and Malaysia.

Violent demonstrations have spread this week after police on Friday battled to defend US missions from mobs in Egypt, Lebanon, Sudan, Tunisia and Yemen.

In east Jerusalen hundreds of Palestinians clashed with Israeli border police, hurling stones and firebombs at a checkpoint.

In Europe calls surfaced Tuesday on social networks for Muslims in France to defy an official ban and hold fresh protests over the anti-Islam film.

The messages on Twitter and other sites called for demonstrations to be held Saturday in Paris, Marseille and other major cities, a week after police in the capital arrested 150 people for taking part in a rowdy protest near the US embassy.

The United States has deployed counter-terror Marine units to Libya to protect its embassy in Tripoli and stationed two destroyers off the North African coast.

On September 11, its consulate in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi came under sustained attack, killing four Americans, including ambassador Chris Stevens. – AFP