Protests have been surging since Sept. 11 over an anti-Islam film produced in the U.S.  The film features as one of its characters Muslim prophet Muhammad, portrayed as a womanizer, child molester and fraud.
The film has started protests in Pakistan, Lebanon, Malaysia, Bangladesh and Libya, who viewed the portrayal as offensive.  Terrorists in Libya killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens following the Internet release of the film on YouTube.
The protests in Pakistan, which began in anger towards the film, “The Innocence of Muslims,” have been both destructive and violent.  Although the Pakistani government declared Friday Sept. 21 as a national holiday, in fact a “Day of Love for the Prophet,” demonstrations across the nation were not peaceful.
“The Innocence of Muslims,” is a short, low-budget American-made film.  The film, with Muhammad as its lead character, portrays the prophet as a chauvinistic pedophile and dictator who cons his people into engaging in inappropriate behaviors, as well as accepting his own, by backing himself by “the word of God.”
In several scenes of the 14-minute YouTube film, the actors’ lines have been dubbed over with offensive language that insults both Muhammad and Islam culture.  The actors have since claimed that they were unaware of the film’s direction and nature, and have since gone into hiding due of death threats because of their involvement.
The filmmaker, Nakoula Bassely Nakoula, a naturalized citizen of Egyptian descent, is a Coptic Christian.  Nakoula, or Sam Bacile, as his cast knew him, told the actors they were making an action adventure movie called, “Desert Warriors.”  The idea of Muhammad and Muslims was not mentioned on set, according to actress Cindy Lee Garcia, who played a role in the movie.
“After I saw everything on the news I called and said, ‘Why did you do this to us?’”  Garcia said.  “He said, ‘Tell the world you’re innocent,’ that he did this, that he was tired of radical Muslims killing innocent people and that he was from Israel.  [Now] I don’t believe anything he said.”
The film’s protests however, have sparked the killing of at least 19 people in Pakistan’s main cities of Karachi and Peshawar, as well as U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in Benghazi, Libya for a total of at least 49 people around the world.
Nearly 200 other people were injured as mobbing protesters threw stones, set fires, used guns and combated the police in the last two weeks of protests.
American videos of President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton denouncing the anti-Islam film on Pakistani television have done little to suppress the anger.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Clinton have made statements asserting Stevens’s death was a terrorist attack, made in conjunction with protests to cover up the act.  Libyan Prime Minister-elect Mustafa Abushagur said in a news conference that an investigation is now underway.