CAIRO —The amateurish, American-made video at the center of the violence in Libya and in Egypt opens with scenes of Egyptian security forces standing idle as Muslims pillage and burn the homes of Egyptian Christians. Then it cuts to cartoonish scenes depicting the Prophet Muhammad as a child of uncertain parentage, a buffoon, a womanizer, a homosexual, a child molester and a greedy, bloodthirsty thug.
The trailer was uploaded to YouTube by an individual whose identity was in question. Some news organizations carried interviews with someone who said he was the filmmaker and identified himself as Sam Bacile, an Israeli-American real estate developer in California, but there was no immediate confirmation in official records of such a person. In one report, he identified himself as 52 and in another 56.
Yigal Palmor, the spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, said in a telephoned statement: “Nobody knows who he is. He is totally unknown in filmmaking circles in Israel. And anything he did — he is not doing it for Israel, or with Israel, or through Israel in any way.” Mr. Palmor also called the filmmaker “a complete loose cannon and an unspeakable idiot.”
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, the man who said he was the filmmaker called Islam “a cancer,” and said he had raised $5 million from about 100 Jewish donors and had shot a two-hour movie in California last year.
By Internet video standards, few people have watched it. The original received a little more than 55,000 views as of 11 a.m. Eastern on Wednesday. A second trailer posted to the same YouTube channel received 15,287 more. An Arabic translation, which has since been taken down by YouTube after a copyright claim by “K Music Sound Productions,” had garnered more than 40,000 views according to the Hollywood film news Web site TheWrap.com.The video gained international attention after a version dubbed in Arabic was publicized in the Egyptian media and when a Florida pastor, Terry Jones, began promoting the video along with his own proclamation of Sept. 11 as “International Judge Muhammad Day.”
The Guardian reported Wednesday that the film clip was also promoted last week by Morris Sadek, an Egyptian-American Copt based in California who has an anti-Islamic blog. One posted photograph features Mr. Sadek and Mr. Jones at a tiny, anti-Islam protest outside the White House in June. Mr. Sadek has told The Associated Press that he plans to show the film.
In a statement on Tuesday, the pastor, Terry Jones of Gainesville, Fla., called the film “an American production, not designed to attack Muslims but to show the destructive ideology of Islam” and said it “further reveals in a satirical fashion the life of Muhammad.”
He said the embassy and consulate attacks illustrated that Muslims “have no tolerance for anything outside of Muhammad” and called Islam “a total deception.”
Mr. Jones inspired deadly riots in Afghanistan in 2010 and 2011 by first threatening to burn copies of the Koran and then burning one in his church. He also once reportedly hanged President Obama in effigy.
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