Foreign Policy In Focus

Holding the director of "Innocence of Muslims," however objectionable a film, responsible for murder doesn't pass the legal smell test.

In his speech before the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, September 25, President Obama denounced the now notorious film denigrating the Prophet Muhammad as "crude and disgusting." He also declined to call the film a catalyst for the tragic deaths of four Americans on September 11 at the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi, Libya. Instead, President Obama rightly reaffirmed America’s commitment to freedom of expression and shined a light on extremists.

At the heart of the discourse over the incident is the position that Islam forbids any depiction of its founder. This belief should be respected. In her initial speech condemning the deaths, Secretary Clinton noted that America has always stood for religious tolerance. And so we stand today.

Yet, rather than seizing an opportunity to explain the significance of depicting Muhammad and to explore various perspectives on the violence, some commentators and even world leaders, such as newly-elected Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, suggest that the film constitutes incitement. The implication is that by providing a representation of Muhammad – just like burning a Quran – the creator is inciting Muslims to commit violence. This argument conveniently shifts the blame to the filmmaker.

As last week’s speech makes clear, however, the incitement debate doesn't work. Along with our acceptance of people of all races and religions, America also honors a strong tradition of respect for freedom of expression, grounded in the U.S. Constitution. This tradition allows criticism of religion, including President Obama's own Christian beliefs, as he stated in his address. But violence holds no place in this equation.

Societies do place limits on rights of expression, and these conditions vary based on community beliefs. There is no absolute right to free speech – even in the United States. To push the debate forward, we must understand these relative norms. The internationally recognized crime of incitement, however, generally prescribes that there must be direct incitement to commit a crime. To be direct, the alleged inciter must have intended to induce his audience into the commission of the crime, or at least have been aware of the likelihood of its commission due to his conduct.

To call these actions incitement begs the question – what crime did the filmmaker induce or know he was likely to induce his audience to commit by lobbing it out into the Internet? Murder? The film may have been distasteful, insensitive, and created to inflame certain viewers. Accordingly, in a free society, protests against it should be permissible and legal. A disturbing assumption, however, anchors the incitement argument with respect to events in Libya: Islam permits individuals to commit violence in response to representations of Muhammad. It follows that the filmmaker knew acts of murder might be a consequence of his actions.

The “depiction equals violence” scenario puts the filmmaker on the legal hook. It seems incredulous, however, that the second largest religion worldwide would condone the murder of innocent civilians – diplomats from the very same nation that supported them, along with France and the United Kingdom, through the revolution. The alternative is too ridiculous, and horrifying, to entertain. As President Obama noted Tuesday, “There is no speech that justifies mindless violence.  There are no words that excuse the killing of innocents.” Reactions in Libya to the violence, including the statements of their newly elected Prime Minister Mustafa Abushagur, indicate that many Libyans agree.

The more likely scenario, promulgated by President Obama, is that these murders are the work of extremists. Recent acts of destruction throughout Libya and in its neighbor Mali – in which Salafists have used bulldozers and pickaxes to damage Sufi mosques considered idolatrous, including ones in UNSECO World Heritage Site Timbuktu – support this phenomenon. The splintering of Islam, just like the factionalized components of modern day Christianity, is on the rise. As with relative free speech norms, the current state of Islam must enter the dialogue.

Blaming the filmmaker is not the answer. This approach is futile not only for its dangerous precedent for free speech and condemning views on Islam, but also because it is impractical in a digital era. As President Obama told the UN General Assembly, “In 2012 … the notion that we can control the flow of information is obsolete.” We must therefore drop the illusory incitement debate. The consequences of failure to do so are grave. Without an acknowledgement of the true causes of this violence, Libyans will continue to face the risk of being high jacked by extremists seeking to hinder the journey to democracy. In his speech, President Obama reminded us that when Ambassador Stevens died, Libyans said he was their friend; and so the United States should make the Libyans ours.

Annie Castellani is a fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit law firm, the Public International Law & Policy Group, where she focuses on transitional justice, constitution drafting, and civil society development in Libya and other post-conflict nations. Her views are independent.

U.S. policies toward the Middle East were more of a factor in protests against "Innocence of Muslims" than insults to religion.

It's tough to deny that Denis Hamill (younger brother of Peter) makes a good point in his September New York Daily News column titled Radical Islamic terror 'flicks' insult humanity far more deeply than an idiot film about Muslims by a felonious con man. He's referring, of course, to the video Innocence of Muslims that's poured gasoline on fire in the Muslim world.

Suppose New Yorkers decided to retaliate and storm all their diplomatic outposts, killing ambassadors and other innocents because we were outraged by an Islamist film that we found offensive? … And, believe me, we have lots more than one dopey fictional film to be offended by.

Go online and you’ll find authentic real-life footage detailing radical Islamist atrocities that any rational person would find far more blasphemous to the human spirit than anything in the YouTube trailer that has set the Muslim world ablaze.

Start with these … videos:

1) The beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl on an Al Qaeda website, perhaps one of the most evil videos ever shot.

2) American hostage Eugene Armstrong being beheaded in Iraq.

3) Hooded terrorists killing Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games.

4) The second plane smashing into the South Tower of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

5) Human beings leaping to their doom from the Trade Center.

6) The collapse of the twin towers as people are obliterated inside.

7) A woman being stoned to death for adultery in Saudi Arabia.

8) The bodies of four U.S. contractors hanging from a bridge above the Euphrates River in Fallujah, Iraq.

Earlier in the piece he said:

I’m having a hard time believing that Islamic extremists from more than 20 countries actually hold 300 million Americans responsible for a single amateur film, an incoherent anti-Islamic screed made by a convicted felon on parole for credit-card scams.

Okay, maybe one or two offended people could be that dumb. But no way could tens of thousands of folks in 20 countries believe the same line of nonsense that this film is representative of the entire American people.

It's tough to deny that, as a progressive, it's difficult to explain the response of many Muslims. But those protesting may be under the impression that the video was the trailer for a mainstream film allowed to be distributed to movie theaters  in the United States, as Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ was.

At al Jazeera, quoted at Race for Iran, Flynt Leverett provides a likely explanation.

If it hadn’t been this film, it would have been something else that triggered an outburst—a manifestation of very, very deep-seated, longstanding resentment in Arab and Muslim societies about many important aspects of American foreign policy toward the region. When Americans think about this, they will tend to want to say that this a cultural issue—that there is something about Islam or that Arabs are insufficiently modernized to be able to keep something like this film in proper perspective. I think that it’s Americans who are having a cultural problem here, and who aren’t really able to keep things like this film in proper perspective. The proper perspective, at least from the vantage of the Muslim world, is that the United States has been, for many years now, an aggressive and a repressive force in the region.” 

Also, it must be recalled that it probably wasn't Innocence of Muslims per se that elicited the most violent responses, but extreme Islamists using it to stoke reaction to the film for their own purposes. As Christian Science Monitor reported yesterday (September 23), "news reports have suggested that there was no video-related anti-US protest before the armed attack that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and the three other men."

Cross-posted from the Foreign Policy in Focus blog Focal Points.

The man who translated and promoted "Innocence of Muslims" is a one-man anti-Islam P.R. firm.

Pastor Terry Jones -- the man who gained infamy for threatening to burn the Koran -- promised to promote Innocence of Muslims, the film that's setting off sparks and lighting brush fires across the Middle East. But Morris Sadek is the man who, Daniel Burke at Religion News Service reports, "translated it into Arabic, sent it to Egyptian journalists, promoted it on his website and posted it on social media." Sadek is "an obscure Egyptian-born Coptic Christian who lives near Washington and proudly touts his ties to Jones." In other words, Sadek was the catalyst to a conflagration, Jones the catalyst for the catalyst. Burke again (emphasid added):

Morris Sadek describes himself as a human rights attorney and president of a small group called the National American Coptic Assembly, based in Chantilly, Va. … But fellow Copts depict Sadek as a fringe figure and publicity hound whose Islamophobic invectives disrupt Copts’ quest for equal rights in Egypt.

… Sadek “has done a lot of harmful things for Copts in Egypt,” said Cynthia Farahat, Coptic Solidarity's director of advocacy. “Every single thing he says is used by Islamists to justify terrorism against Copts."

And that's the last thing Copts need. At WND, Aaron Klein writes about the persecution to which they were subjected even before this latest episode.

While Copts were targeted by Islamists during Mubarak’s regime, such persecution has increased exponentially since Mubarak’s ouster.

Just weeks after Mubarak was booted, Muslim villagers in March 2011 reportedly set fire to a Coptic church while attacking Christians on the street.

Since last year, two other churches were set on fire in the Imbaba neighborhood of Cairo and in Edfu in the south of the country. Coptic Christian families were also reportedly evicted from their homes in Alexandria.

Some reports say more than 200,000 Copts already have fled their homes.

When Copts attempted to protest last October, security forces reportedly fired at the protesters, killing 24 and wounding more than 300 people.

Maggie Michael of the Associated Press reports on Copt persecution since the film.

"We are afraid the anger will engulf us," said Monier Hanna, 58, a Coptic government employee who says he saw two unveiled Christian women being harassed over the movie by Muslim men in his middle-class district of Helwan on Thursday.

… Mira Girgis, a 23-year-old Copt and recent college graduate, said she feels insecure.

"I can't go to church alone; my brother must be with me. I can't go out at night. When I return from work, a male — either my father or brother — must be waiting for me at the subway station," she said. "Being a Christian ... is hard in Egypt in these conditions."

A Christian journalist, Caroline Kamel, wrote in the Shorouk daily Friday that she and her family came under attack at a bus terminal in Cairo and another city over the film.

"Am I supposed to ... apologize for stupidities of others just for the mere fact that we share the same religion?" she said.

By way of distancing themselves from the film, Copts

… gathered Friday in front of a Cairo cathedral holding signs denouncing a film that mocked the Prophet Muhammad amid fears that Muslims will take out their anger on Egypt's minority community.

The Coptic Christian Church has issued a statement denouncing the film and rejecting "defamation" of the Muslim faith, and church officials have pledged that Christians will join their "brotherly Muslims" in sit-ins against the movie.

"This is part of a wicked campaign against religions, aimed at causing discord among people, especially Egyptians," read the statement, issued Wednesday by the Sacred Congregation of the Coptic Church.

Morris Sadek is not only no friend to Middle-Eastern Christians, but, by providing them with a ready-made pretext to incite the public, he's shown that he's a friend to Islamic extremists.