It wasn't deemed significant until the muslim terrorists chose it to be the latest justification for their attacks on our embassies.
Which makes it significant. I understand what you're saying, that it would otherwise be insignificant, but the fact that they chose to pee their pants over it makes it significant.
Regarding being discredited - they're being linked to a Christian organization! Pass the smelling salts.
Yes, a Christian organization that has very colorful history of broadcasting long and loud anti-Muslim rants on TV. The fact that this movie was at least in part financed by a Christian group makes sense, since someone who is ambivalent about Muslims wouldn't be very likely to finance a movie of this sort. And it makes sense for this particular Christian organization, since the have a very active and strong anti-Muslim stance to begin with. You really should visit their Web site. They're not "American" Christians, if that'll make you feel any better. The Web site is in Arabic.
The
Media for Christ group is led my a man, Joselh Nassralla Abdelmash, who is a Coptic Christian from Egypt who on more than one occasion has been involved in protests against Islam, including to one protest against a proposal to build a mosque and Islamic cultural center near the World Trade Center site. He went into hiding at the first violent reaction to the film. The promoter of the film is Steve Klein, a California insurance salesman and Vietnam War veteran who has spent years protesting at mosques and espousing hatred of radical Muslims. Klein founded Courageous Christians United, which conducts protests outside abortion clinics, Mormon temples and mosques. Especially mosques. He also started Concerned Citizens for the First Amendment, which preaches against Islam and Muslims, and publishes volumes of anti-Muslim propaganda that Klein distributes. The Southern Poverty Law Center says they have been tracking Klein for several years and have labeled two of the organizations he is affiliated with as hate groups.
The the filmmaker himself, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a is a Coptic Christian from Egypt with an ax to grind. He has a criminal record both here and in Egypt, and is an anti-Islam activist. Nakoula, while using the alias “Sam Bacile,” had tried to place the responsibility for
Innocence of Muslims onto Jews and Israelis by claiming they, along with the US Intelligence agencies, were responsible for the film. That one didn't have any legs though, although there are some Muslims who believe the US is behind every little thing bad that befalls them.
A guy named Morris Sadek, an Egyptian-American Coptic Christian who is a lawyer and anti-Islam activist, an anti-Islam Blogger, and also participated at the Ground Zero Mosque protest on 9/11, 2010 with a crucifix, Bible, and American flag, stating that "Islam is evil" and "Islam is a cult religion."
The movie on YouTube was actually several clips of about 14 minutes each, and were uploaded by Nakoula in July of this year. At that time they were both indeed insignificant and obscure. But it was Morris Sadek, the anti-Islamic Blogger who drew the attention of the clips to Egypt and the Arab world when on September 6th, five days before 9/11, he sent out dozens of e-mails to Muslim and other journalists in Arab countries, especially Egypt, informing them of the movie and the clips. Two days later in September 8th an excerpt of the YouTube video was broadcast on Al-Nas TV, an Egyptian Islamist television station with definite radical Muslim tendencies (under Egypt's previous management, Al-Nas had their broadcast privileges suspended for promoting Islamic extremism, or technically, "promoting religious or sectarian hatred.”)
Regardless, these attacks would have occurred even if this video had never been made.
Quite possibly. I don't know one way or the other. But the timing of Sadek's e-mails and of the Al-Nas broadcasts certainly played a part in all this, if nothing else to provide the perfect excuse for violent protests that they wanted to do in the first place.
