By NBC News staff and wire reports
A California-based property developer who claims to be responsible for ?Innocence of Muslims,? a provocative film about the Prophet Muhammad, which sparked Tuesday?s deadly attack on the U.S. mission in Libya and further protests in Egypt, has gone into hiding, The Associated Press reported.
Speaking by phone from an undisclosed location, Israeli-American writer and director Sam Bacile, 56, remained defiant, saying that he intended his film to be a political statement condemning the religion, the AP said.
"Islam is a cancer, period," the AP quoted him as repeatedly saying.
An English-language 13-minute trailer on YouTube shows an amateur cast performing a wooden dialogue of insults disguised as revelations about Muhammad.
Muslims find it offensive to depict Muhammad in any manner, let alone insult the prophet. A Danish newspaper's 2005 publication of 12 caricatures of the prophet triggered riots in many Muslim countries.?
The?Wall Street Journal reported the film had been promoted by Terry Jones, the Florida pastor whose burning of Qurans previously sparked deadly riots in Pakistan and other Muslim nations.
Mock trial
A statement on the pastor?s political website, posted late Tuesday, said it would be re-broadcasting the trailer for the film as part of a day-long ?International Judge Mohammad Day? in which it subjected the Muslim prophet to a mock trial for ?promoting murder, rape, and destruction of people and property through his writings called the Koran.?
NBC's Kerry Sanders talks about the controversial pastor's history of provocative acts against Islam and how he may be tied to an inflammatory film that has sparked uproar within the global Muslim community.
The statement said of Bacile?s film: ?It is an American production, not designed to attack Muslims but to show the destructive ideology of Islam. The movie further reveals in a satirical fashion the life of Muhammad.?
Although it was posted to YouTube in 2011, the film only attracted attention in the Middle East after an unknown contributor dubbed it into Egyptian Arabic. That translation, which Bacile told the AP was accurate, has been broadcast repeatedly on Egyptian media in recent weeks after being seized upon by extreme Islamists who dislike the presence of the country?s Coptic Christians.
Film news site The Wrap said the Arabic-dubbed version had garnered more than 40,000 views by Tuesday afternoon. However, that clip appeared to have been taken down on Wednesday.
?This is an obscure film, amateurish, it?s a YouTube film that would have passed by without comment if it had not been picked up and commented on in Egypt,? NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel told MSNBC on Wednesday.
Bacile said the two-hour movie cost $5 million to make and was financed with the help of more than 100 Jewish donors, the AP reported.
Neither Bacile?s identity, nor his background, could be independently confirmed early Wednesday. A YouTube profile under the name ?sam bacile? contained only two 13-minute trailers for the film and there appeared to be no official Internet site or social media profile for Bacile or his film.
Shown to near-empty theater
The film was made in the summer of 2011, with 59 actors and about 45 people behind the camera ? but has been shown once, to a mostly empty theater in Hollywood earlier this year, said Bacile.
"This is a political movie," he said. "The U.S. lost a lot of money and a lot of people in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but we're fighting with ideas."?
Bacile, a California real estate developer, told the AP he believes the movie will help his native land by exposing Islam's flaws to the world.?
NBC's Andrea Mitchell reports on the death of the U.S. ambassador to Libya in an attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. The envoy is the first American ambassador killed on duty since 1979.
It depicts Muhammad as a feckless philanderer who approved of child sexual abuse, among other overtly insulting claims that have caused outrage.?
Asked about the death of an American State Department officer in Libya after protests over the film -- before it emerged that Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others were killed -- Bacile was apologetic but blamed lax embassy security and the perpetrators of the violence.?
"I feel the security system (at the embassies) is no good," said Bacile. "America should do something to change it."?
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
More world stories from NBC News:
Follow World News from NBCNews.com on?Twitter?and?Facebook
?
?
?
felicia day nfl 2012 draft st louis rams miami dolphins buffalo bills minnesota vikings pittsburgh steelers
কোন মন্তব্য নেই:
একটি মন্তব্য পোস্ট করুন