Tag: anti-Islam

Sam Bacile, Anti-Islam Filmmaker, In Hiding After Protests

İslam karşıtı filmin yapımcısı islam’ı kanser olarak niteliyor

LOS ANGELES (AP) — An Israeli filmmaker based in California went into hiding Tuesday after his movie attacking Islam’s prophet Muhammad sparked angry assaults by ultra-conservative Muslims on U.S. missions in Egypt and Libya, where one American was killed.

Speaking by phone from an undisclosed location, writer and director Sam Bacile remained defiant, saying Islam is a cancer and that the 56-year-old intended his film to be a provocative political statement condemning the religion.

Protesters angered over Bacile’s film opened fire on and burned down the U.S. consulate in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, killing an American diplomat on Tuesday. In Egypt, protesters scaled the walls of the U.S. embassy in Cairo and replaced an American flag with an Islamic banner.

“This is a political movie,” said Bacile. “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 who identifies himself as an Israeli Jew, said he believes the movie will help his native land by exposing Islam’s flaws to the world.

“Islam is a cancer, period,” he said repeatedly, his solemn voice thickly accented.

The two-hour movie, “Innocence of Muslims,” cost $5 million to make and was financed with the help of more than 100 Jewish donors, said Bacile, who wrote and directed it.

The film claims Muhammad was a fraud. An English-language 13-minute trailer on YouTube shows an amateur cast performing a wooden dialogue of insults disguised as revelations about Muhammad, whose obedient followers are presented as a cadre of goons.

It depicts Muhammad as a feckless philanderer who approved of child sexual abuse, among other overtly insulting claims that have caused outrage.

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.

Though Bacile was apologetic about the American who was killed as a result of the outrage over his film, he 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.”

A consultant on the film, Steve Klein, said the filmmaker is concerned for family members who live in Egypt. Bacile declined to confirm.

Klein said he vowed to help Bacile make the movie but warned him that “you’re going to be the next Theo van Gogh.” Van Gogh was a Dutch filmmaker killed by a Muslim extremist in 2004 after making a film that was perceived as insulting to Islam.

“We went into this knowing this was probably going to happen,” Klein said.

Bacile’s film was dubbed into Egyptian Arabic by someone he doesn’t know, but he speaks enough Arabic to confirm that the translation is accurate. It was made in three months in the summer of 2011, with 59 actors and about 45 people behind the camera.

The full film has been shown once, to a mostly empty theater in Hollywood earlier this year, said Bacile.

via Sam Bacile, Anti-Islam Filmmaker, In Hiding After Protests.

September 12, 2012
Message to Muslims: I’m Sorry
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Published: September 18, 2010

Many Americans have suggested that more moderate Muslims should stand up to extremists, speak out for tolerance, and apologize for sins committed by their brethren.
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Nicholas D. Kristof

On the Ground

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Room for Debate: Can Speech Be Limited for Public Workers? (September 19, 2010)
That’s reasonable advice, and as a moderate myself, I’m going to take it. (Throat clearing.) I hereby apologize to Muslims for the wave of bigotry and simple nuttiness that has lately been directed at you. The venom on the airwaves, equating Muslims with terrorists, should embarrass us more than you. Muslims are one of the last minorities in the United States that it is still possible to demean openly, and I apologize for the slurs.

I’m inspired by another journalistic apology. The Portland Press Herald in Maine published an innocuous front-page article and photo a week ago about 3,000 local Muslims praying together to mark the end of Ramadan. Readers were upset, because publication coincided with the ninth anniversary of 9/11, and they deluged the paper with protests.

So the newspaper published a groveling front-page apology for being too respectful of Muslims. “We sincerely apologize,” wrote the editor and publisher, Richard Connor, and he added: “we erred by at least not offering balance to the story and its prominent position on the front page.” As a blog by James Poniewozik of Time paraphrased it: “Sorry for Portraying Muslims as Human.”

I called Mr. Connor, and he seems like a nice guy. Surely his front page isn’t reserved for stories about Bad Muslims, with articles about Good Muslims going inside. Must coverage of law-abiding Muslims be “balanced” by a discussion of Muslim terrorists?

Ah, balance — who can be against that? But should reporting of Pope Benedict’s trip to Britain be “balanced” by a discussion of Catholic terrorists in Ireland? And what about journalism itself?

I interrupt this discussion of peaceful journalism in Maine to provide some “balance.” Journalists can also be terrorists, murderers and rapists. For example, radio journalists in Rwanda promoted genocide.

I apologize to Muslims for another reason. This isn’t about them, but about us. I want to defend Muslims from intolerance, but I also want to defend America against extremists engineering a spasm of religious hatred.

Granted, the reason for the nastiness isn’t hard to understand. Extremist Muslims have led to fear and repugnance toward Islam as a whole. Threats by Muslim crazies just in the last few days forced a Seattle cartoonist, Molly Norris, to go into hiding after she drew a cartoon about Muhammad that went viral.

And then there’s 9/11. When I recently compared today’s prejudice toward Muslims to the historical bigotry toward Catholics, Mormons, Jews and Asian-Americans, many readers protested that it was a false parallel. As one, Carla, put it on my blog: “Catholics and Jews did not come here and kill thousands of people.”

That’s true, but Japanese did attack Pearl Harbor and in the end killed far more Americans than Al Qaeda ever did. Consumed by our fears, we lumped together anyone of Japanese ancestry and rounded them up in internment camps. The threat was real, but so were the hysteria and the overreaction.

Radicals tend to empower radicals, creating a gulf of mutual misunderstanding and anger. Many Americans believe that Osama bin Laden is representative of Muslims, and many Afghans believe that the Rev. Terry Jones (who talked about burning Korans) is representative of Christians.

Many Americans honestly believe that Muslims are prone to violence, but humans are too complicated and diverse to lump into groups that we form invidious conclusions about. We’ve mostly learned that about blacks, Jews and other groups that suffered historic discrimination, but it’s still O.K. to make sweeping statements about “Muslims” as an undifferentiated mass.

In my travels, I’ve seen some of the worst of Islam: theocratic mullahs oppressing people in Iran; girls kept out of school in Afghanistan in the name of religion; girls subjected to genital mutilation in Africa in the name of Islam; warlords in Yemen and Sudan who wield AK-47s and claim to be doing God’s bidding.

But I’ve also seen the exact opposite: Muslim aid workers in Afghanistan who risk their lives to educate girls; a Pakistani imam who shelters rape victims; Muslim leaders who campaign against female genital mutilation and note that it is not really an Islamic practice; Pakistani Muslims who stand up for oppressed Christians and Hindus; and above all, the innumerable Muslim aid workers in Congo, Darfur, Bangladesh and so many other parts of the world who are inspired by the Koran to risk their lives to help others. Those Muslims have helped keep me alive, and they set a standard of compassion, peacefulness and altruism that we should all emulate.

I’m sickened when I hear such gentle souls lumped in with Qaeda terrorists, and when I hear the faith they hold sacred excoriated and mocked. To them and to others smeared, I apologize.

I invite you to comment on this column on my blog, On the Ground. Please also join me on Facebook, watch my YouTube videos and follow me on Twitter.
September 21, 2010
Dutch MPs cancel trip to Turkey

The planned visit of a parliamentary delegation to Turkey has been cancelled.

Photo: Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders (ANP)

The MPs have unanimously decided to cancel the visit after the Turkish government said it would not meet with any of the delegates because of the presence of Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders among them.

Labour Party MP and delegation leader Harm Evert Waalkens expressed regret that the trip to Turkey was cancelled, but said parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee had acted on the principle of support for a fellow MP’s freedom of speech.

Geert Wilders is highly controversial in Turkey because of his inflammatory statements on Islam. He said he had wanted to travel to Turkey to explain in person why he believes the country cannot join the European Union.
The Turkish government has expressed surprise and regret at the news of the cancelled visit. Ankara says it never said Mr Wilders was not welcome, just simply that it would not roll out the red carpet for him.

Source: www.rnw.nl, 2 December 2009

December 3, 2009
Police fear far-right terror attack

• Extremists want to stoke race tensions, officer warns
• Counter-terrorism unit diverting resources to threat
• No specific intelligence of planned strike, sources say

Vikram Dodd

Scotland Yard’s counter-terrorism command fears that right-wing extremists will stage a deadly terrorist attack in Britain to try to stoke racial tensions, the Guardian has learned.

Senior officers say it will be a “spectacular” that is designed to kill. The counter-terrorism unit has redeployed officers to increase its monitoring of the extreme right’s potential to stage attacks.

Commander Shaun Sawyer told a meeting of British Muslims concerned about the danger to their communities that police were responding to the growing threat.

Sawyer said of the far right: “I fear that they will have a spectacular… they will carry out an attack that will lead to a loss of life or injury to a community somewhere. They’re not choosy about which community.”

He said the aim would be to cause a “breakdown in community cohesion”.

Sawyer revealed that the Met commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, had asked the counter-terrorism command, SO15, to examine what the economic downturn would mean for far-right violence. The assessment concluded that the recession would increase the possibility of it.

Sawyer told the meeting last Wednesday that more of his officers needed to be deployed to try to thwart neo-Nazi-inspired violence. He said the terrorist threat posed by al-Qaida remained the unit’s priority, but said of its far-right section: “It is a small desk … we need to grow that unit.” Sources have told the Guardian that while they believe the neo-Nazi terrorist threat has grown, they have no specific intelligence of an attack.

“There is an increased possibility of violence from the far right. There is a trend,” said one senior source, adding that the ideology of the violent right was driven by “people who don’t like immigration, people who don’t like Islam. We’re seeing a resurgence of anti-semitism as well.”

The meeting at which Sawyer spoke was staged by the Muslim Safety Forum, whose chair, Abdurahman Jafar, said: “Muslims are the first line of victims in the extreme right’s campaign of hate and division and they make no secret about that. Statistics show a strong correlation between the rise of racist and Islamophobic hate crime and the ascendancy of the BNP.”

It is a decade since an extreme rightwing terrorist has used bombs to claim lives in Britain. In 1999, David Copeland struck three targets in London. His attack on a gay pub in Soho, London, killed three people and left scores injured. It followed attacks against the Muslim community in Brick Lane, east London, and the bombing of a market in Brixton, south London.

The senior source said: “When Copeland attacked we did not have the religious tensions with the Muslim community. What kind of schism would a Copeland-type event cause now?”

The far-right threat to Britain’s Jewish communities is monitored by theCommunity Security Trust, which says attempted terrorist violence by neo-Nazis has increased in the past few years. It says nine white men have been “convicted of offences involving explosives, terrorist plots, violent campaigns or threats to carry them out”.

David Rich, of the CST, said: “There’s no one directing people, it’s a mindset” – a reference to the easy availability of extremist right-wing material and information about making bombs.

Source: www.guardian.co.uk, 6 July 2009

July 14, 2009
BNP wins two seats in Europe

[1]

LONDON (AFP) — The British National Party on Monday won its first seats in the European Parliament, in a major breakthrough for a party reviled by mainstream politicians for its anti-immigration stance.

Party chairman Nick Griffin was elected an MEP in the northwest of England region with eight percent of the vote, hours after Andrew Brons won the BNP’s first ever European seat in the nearby Yorkshire and the Humber region.

Griffin had earlier hailed Brons’ win — with almost 10 percent of the vote — as “a huge breakthrough” for his party, and used the victory to reiterate his party’s anti-immigration and anti-Islam stance.

He denied his party was racist, but said: “We do say this country is full up. The key thing is to shut the door.”

Griffin told Sky News television: “This is a Christian country and Islam is not welcome, because Islam and Christianity, Islam and democracy, Islam and women’s rights do not mix.

“That’s a simple fact that the elites of Europe are going to have to get their heads round and deal with over the next few years.”

The result is a vindication of efforts by Griffin, who was educated at the prestigious Cambridge University, to recast the party since taking over in 1999, emphasising its grassroots activism over extreme-right ideology.

Amid concerns about soaring unemployment and a deep recession and in particular the demise of the country’s manufacturing base, the BNP has pledged British jobs for British workers.

It is opposed to European integration and wants to pull Britain out of the European Union and halt all immigration to the country.

In recent weeks it has also capitalised on public anger over the row over lawmakers’ expenses, which has severely damaged the reputation of parliament and the mainstream Labour and Conservative parties.

Health minister Andrew Burnham described the BNP’s first MEP victory as a “sad moment“, and following Griffin’s success in the northwest, local Labour MP Tony Lloyd said he was ashamed at how some people had voted.

“I am genuinely not just disappointed, I think it is a matter of shame, this country has a deserved reputation for a tolerant society,” said Lloyd, the Labour MP for Manchester Central.

“Their (the BNP) vision for Britain is a nightmare for Britain. I think many people will wake up with some sense of shame.”

Government ministers and the Conservative party had sought to remind voters of the BNP’s policies, which include calls for the immediate halt to all immigration to Britain and the “voluntary resettlement” of all immigrants.

Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved.

Source: www.google.com, 08.06.2009

[2]

Sarkozy: “Islamization is Inevitable”

From the desk of Tiberge on Sat, 2009-06-06 18:36

There is nothing new here. We knew what Sarkozy’s vision of the future was: an “Islam of France”, “métissage” between races and ethnic groups, dissolution of nationalist, regional, and ethnic identities, subjugation to Brussels, openness to socialism, and a Turkey as closely aligned with Europe as possible, etc…

But it’s always sobering to hear it again, from one who knows Sarkozy personally. Philippe de Villiers was interviewed by the weekly Famille Chrétienne. The Catholic blogLe Salon Beige relates part of the interview:

– Why are you so focused on the theme of Turkey and Islamization?

– Quite simply because we will see the first transformations of churches into mosques in the coming three years. At any rate, that is what Nicolas Sarkozy told me.

– When?

– I had an in depth discussion with him at Elysée at the end of last year. He said to me: “You have intuition, I have the figures. And your intuition is confirmed by my figures. The Islamization of Europe is inevitable.” Careful: it’s a process that will not occur overnight, but will take decades.

– Why does this issue appear to be of central importance to you?

– Most politicians have a comforting ignorance of what Islam is and propose transforming Europe into a supermarket of competing religions. Unaware that Islam is not only a religion since, by melding the temporal and the spiritual, it imposes a law. But behind this comforting ignorance of politicians, there are those who know. (…) The reality is that we are headed for a criss-cross [chassé-croisé] with, on one side, Europe and its en masse abortions, its promotion of gay marriage, and on the other, immigration en masse (…)

“Chassé-croisé” is virtually impossible to translate. Originally a choreographic term, it usually refers to a crowded movement in one direction that passes but never encounters a crowded movement in another direction. Sometimes it is just kept as is in English.

– Aren’t you exaggerating the dimensions of the phenomenon?

– No. The crux of the issue is simple: Europe is refusing its own demographic future. And it is working with a fearsome weapon towards this end, written into the Charter of fundamental rights appended to the treaty of Lisbon: the promotion of gay marriage. This in turn is accomplished through the principle of non-discrimination and the disassociation of marriage from the sex of the spouses (which appears in article 7 of the Charter of fundamental rights). In reality, there are two weapons being used by European leaders to kill Europe demographically: the promotion of gay marriage and en masse abortions. And a third: the recourse to immigration that is 80% Islamic in order to replace the people who are no longer there (…)

As usual there are LSB readers who question Villiers’ sincerity and motives. But this time, there are also many who applaud his courage. He is certainly putting more muscle into his words on the eve of the election.

A spokesman for Elysée protested saying: “Philippe de Villiers is not the spokesman for Elysée. He makes multiple declarations on this topic, declarations that obviously need to be regarded with caution.”

Source: www.brusselsjournal.com, 06-06-2009

June 8, 2009