Cairo U.S. Embassy Protested Over Anti-Islam Film Linked to Terry Jones

Source: Daily Beast


At least 2,000 demonstrators, enraged over a little-known film produced in the United States that allegedly insults the Prophet Muhammad, shouted, “We will sacrifice ourselves for you, Allah’s messenger!” A group of men managed to mount the embassy’s walls waving a black flag with the words “There is no God but God, and Muhammad is his messenger.” Many of those gathered did not know the name of the film, nor did they know the details of their grievance against the purported filmmaker, U.S. pastor Terry Jones, whose 2010 threats to burn the Quran triggered deadly riots in Afghanistan. Similar attacks were reported on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.


Al-Azhar, one of the Arab world’s most elite centers for higher Islamic learning, reportedly condemned the film on Tuesday, citing a scene in which a character based on the Prophet Muhammad goes on trial. Jones allegedly worked with a handful of Egyptian Christians in the U.S. to produce the film, whose 14-minute Arabic-dubbed trailer on YouTube depicts the Prophet as a deranged womanizer calling for massacres.


The organization standupamericanow.org ran a live stream on Tuesday of a press conference featuring Jones in what he dubbed “International Judge Muhammad Day,” during which he listed reasons why, in his opinion, the Prophet should be put on hypothetical trial.


Muslims consider any depiction of the Prophet, be it in an illustration or film, to be a violation of Islamic belief. Similar protests were staged outside the Danish Embassy in Cairo and across the Muslim world in 2005 after the daily newspaper Jyllands-Posten published satirical cartoons depicting the Prophet.


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