(CNN) — U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Thursday she has “absolutely no information or reason to believe there is any basis” to suggest that U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens believed he was on an al Qaeda hit list.

The remark came after a source familiar with Stevens’ thinking told CNN that in the months leading up to his death, Stevens worried about constant security threats in Benghazi and mentioned that his name was on an al Qaeda hit list.

Stevens spoke about a rise in Islamic extremism and al Qaeda’s growing presence in Libya, the source said.

The White House, for the first time Thursday, declared the attack that killed Stevens and three other people a terrorist attack.

“It is, I think, self-evident that what happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack,” said White House spokesman Jay Carney, speaking to reporters on Air Force One.

On Wednesday, Matthew Olsen, director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, gave a similar statement.

“I would say yes, they were killed in the course of a terrorist attack on our embassy,” Olsen said at a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing.

Stevens and three other Americans were killed September 11 during a large protest at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi. Demonstrators were angry about a film made in the United States that mocked the Muslim Prophet Mohammed.

President Barack Obama, during a candidates forum Thursday on Univision, said the anti-Islam video, “Innocence of Muslims,” that stirred protests was “used as an excuse by some to carry out inexcusable violent acts directed at Westerners.”

Sources tracking militant Islamist groups in the region said that a pro-al Qaeda group was the chief suspect and that the attack appeared to have been planned. The attackers used the protest as a diversion, the sources said.

At a memorial service Thursday in Libya, Mohamed al-Magariaf, president of Libya’s General National Congress, expressed sorrow for the deaths of the four who were working “for the sake of Libya.”

Libyan and U.S. officials attended the service in Tripoli for Stevens, computer expert Sean Smith, and former Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods.

Stevens “helped Libya in its darkest hours,” al-Magariaf said.

“He worked tirelessly as a representative of the United States of America.”

The U.S. national anthem played at the ceremony.

Al-Magariaf vowed the perpetrators will be brought to justice.

Libya has taken steps to arrest those responsible for the consulate attack, bringing in dozens for questioning over the weekend, Libyan officials have said.

Prime Minister Mustafa Abushagur told CNN on Thursday that eight people have been detained in the investigation.

Those in custody include “far extremists” including members of Ansar al-Sharia, a loosely connected radical Islamist group based in Benghazi, he said. Yet while some Ansar al-Sharia members may have been among the 30 to 50 people involved in the September 11 assault, the attackers didn’t all come from one specific group, Abushagur added.

The prime minister described those behind the attack as a loose organization with no set members, no known affiliation to al Qaeda and no foreigners among their membership. A Libyan official earlier said those arrested included some from Mali and Algeria, as well as al Qaeda sympathizers.

Quote from first story, above:

Protesters chanted: “You terrorists, you cowards. Go back to Afghanistan.”

A senior U.S. official, meanwhile, told CNN on Thursday that Ansar al-Shariah had not been positively identified as responsible for the attack, “which is more likely to turn out to be a bunch of various elements and basically (al Qaeda) militants.”

Authorities are going after those who led the attack, though Abushagur said Libya is a vast country with many places to hide.

As to taking on extremist militias, generally, around Libya, the prime minister said his government’s goal is to bring them into the mainstream, and that taking them on militarily would lead to unnecessary bloodshed.

Abushagur praised the Obama administration’s handling of the situation. Still, while he welcomed general cooperation, the prime minister said that U.S. military action in Libya would spark chaos.

Full Article

Al Qaeda affiliate, Islamist militia eyed in ‘coordinated’ consulate attack in Libya, sources say

In what human rights groups called a surprise decision, the U.S. Justice Department released the names of 55 Guantanamo Bay prison detainees Friday.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) posted the list of the 55 detainees on its website (PDF). The release of their names does not absolve them of any wrongdoing.

“We did not expect this,” an attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights told the Associated Press. “This is an important development.”

Though the prisoners have been approved for transfer to other countries, there was no indication of when that might occur.

In a statement, the ACLU noted that the list did not include Adnan Latif, who died in his cell earlier this month. Latif, one of the first people imprisoned at Guantanamo, had his release blocked by a Circuit Court of Appeals judge last year.

The Obama administration is pushing back on a Fox News report that the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya that killed four Americans, including Ambassador to J. Christopher Stevens. was lead by former Gitmo detainee.

Fox News reported Wednesday that, “U.S. intelligence sources say Sufyan Ben Qumu may be behind the attacks.” Qumu was transferred into Libyan custody in 2007. His detention file describes him as a former member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and a “probable member of al Qaeda.”

But a US national security official tells Mother Jones that “that report is wrong, there’s no intelligence suggesting that he was leading the attack on the consulate that evening.” The official insisted there was no evidence that Qumu “directed, coordinated, or planned” the attack.

The administration has come under fire, particularly from Republicans, for saying it does not yet have evidence the attack on the US consulate, which occurred on the eleventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, was preplanned. Testifying before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee yesterday, Matthew G. Olsen, the head of the National Counterterrorism Center, said that “a number of different elements are thought to be involved in this attack, including individuals involved in militant groups that are prominent in the Benghazi area,” but that “there was no specific intelligence regarding an imminent attack prior to September 11th on our post in Benghazi.”

Whether or not there was intelligence warning of an imminent attack, Republicans have balked at the administration’s statements saying the attack may not have been planned in advance, in part because Libyan officials have said local security forces may have been involved. During the hearing, Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine) expressed skepticism at the idea the attack was not premeditated. “I just don’t think people come to protests with [rocket-propelled grenades] and other heavy weapons,” Collins said.

Former Bush-era Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld tweeted the Fox News article Thursday, calling it “A sad reminder of why Guantanamo was – and remains – necessary to keep terrorists from killing Americans.”

The extent to which intelligence or security failures lead to the ambush at the embassy is still unclear, but Foreign Policy‘s Josh Rogin reports that the State Department will convene a bipartisan panel to investigate both the Libya attack and attacks on US embassies in Egypt and Yemen.

“The Innocence of Muslims”: Blasphemy as a Political Tactic

Thierry Meyssan
Infowars.com

The circulation on the Internet of the trailer for a film, The Innocence of Muslims, sparked demonstrations across the world and resulted in the killing in Benghazi of the U.S. Ambassador to Libya and members of his entourage.

*        *        *

At first glance, these events can be located in the long line leading from Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses to the burnings of the Koran by Pastor Terry Jones. Nevertheless, this new attack differs from other incidents in that the film was not directed at a Western audience but instead was uniquely conceived as an instrument of provocation directed at Muslims.

In political terms, the affair can be analyzed from two angles: from the tactical perspective as an anti-U.S. manipulation; or from a strategic one, as an anti-Muslim psychological attack.

The film was produced by a Zionist group composed of Jews of double Israeli-American nationality and by an Egyptian Copt. It was completed several months ago but was released at a calculated moment to provoke riots targeting the United States.

Israeli agents were deployed in several large cities with a mission to channel the rage of the crowd against American or Coptic targets (though not Israeli ones). Not surprisingly, their maximum effect was attained in Benghazi, the capital of Libya’s Cyrenaica region.

The population of Benghazi is known to harbor particularly reactionary and racist groups. It is useful to recall that at the time the cartoons of Mohammed appeared in September, 2005, Salafists attacked the Danish Consulate. In keeping with the Vienna Convention on diplomacy, the Libyan government of Muammar al-Gaddafi deployed troops to protect the diplomatic service then under attack. The repression of the riot resulted in numerous deaths. Subsequently, the West, seeking to overthrow the Libyan regime, financed Salafist publications which accused Gaddafi of protecting the Danish Consulate because he had allegedly been behind the cartoon operation.

On February 15, 2011, Salafists organized in Benghazi a demonstration commemorating the massacre during which shooting erupted, an incident that marked the beginning of the Benghazi insurrection that opened the way to the NATO intervention. The Libyan police arrested three members of the Italian Special Forces who confessed to having fired from the rooftops on both demonstrators and the police to sew chaos and confusion. Held prisoner throughout the war that followed, they were released when NATO seized the capital and smuggled them out of the country to Malta in a small fishing boat on which I was also a passenger.

This time, the manipulation of the Benghazi crowd by Israeli agents had as its goal the assassination of the U.S. Ambassador, an act of war not seen since the Israeli bombardment of the USS Liberty by the Israeli Air Force and Navy in 1967. This constitutes the first assassination of an ambassador in the line of duty since 1979. The act is all the more grievous considering that in a country where the current central government is a purely legal fiction, the U.S. Ambassador was not merely a diplomat but was functioning as Governor, as the de facto head of state.

It should be emphasized that in the past few weeks, the highest-ranking U.S. military officers have entered into open conflict with the Israeli government. They have issued declarations signifying their intention to halt the cycle of wars begun after September 11 (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria) and which, in light of the informal agreements of 2001, will expand further (Sudan, Somalia and Iran). The first warning shot occurred in Afghanistan, in August 2012, when two missiles were fired at the parked plane of General Martin Dempsey, head of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. This second warning turned out to be even more brutal.

If, on the other hand, we examine this affair from the viewpoint of social psychology, the release of the film and its aftermath appear to be a frontal attack on the beliefs of Muslims. In this regard, it is similar in nature to the Pussy Riot episode trampling on the freedom of religious practice inside the Orthodox Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow and the mulitple performances of conceptual pornography the group engaged in afterwards. These are operations geared to violate societies that resist the project of global domination.

In democratic and multicultural societies, the sacred is seen as belonging to and being expressed within the private sphere. But a new collective space of the sacred has been in the process of elaboration. Western European states have passed “historical memory” laws which have transformed a historical event—the Nazi destruction of European Jews—into a religious occurrence: the “Shoa” in Jewish terminology, or the “Holocaust” as expressed in Christian evangelical parlance. Nazi crimes are thereby elevated to the level of a unique event at the expense of the victims of other massacres, including other victims of the Nazis. Questioning the dogma, i.e. this religious interpretation of historical facts, subjects one to criminal penalties, just as blasphemy was punished in the past. Similarly, in 2001, the U.S., the European Union member states and a number of their allies imposed by decree that entire national populations must observe a minute of silence in memory of the victims of the September 11 attacks. This ruling was underpinned by an ideological interpretation of the causes of the massacre. In both cases, having been killed because one was Jewish or because one was American confers a particular status on these victims before whom the rest of humanity must genuflect.

During the Olympic Games in London, both the Israeli and the American delegations attempted to enlarge their sacred space still further by imposing a minute of silence during the opening ceremony of the most-watched televised event in the world, this time on behalf of the hostages seized during the Munich Games of 1972. In the end, the proposal was rejected, with the Olympic Committee holding instead a separate ceremony. This is just a further indication of the effort to create a collective liturgy legitimating the global empire.

The Innocence of Muslims serves both as a device to bring Washington back into line at a moment when it may be stepping back from the Zionist agenda and as a means of pursuing it further by attacking the faith of still others who resist it.

Translated from French at Voltairenet.org   by Michele Stoddard

Judge Won’t Force YouTube to Remove Anti-Muslim Video

Posted: September 20, 2012

(CN) – A Los Angeles County judge on Thursday refused to order YouTube to take down “The Innocence of Muslims” video, despite an actress’s claim that she was tricked into appearing in the inflammatory film.

Superior Court Judge Luis Lanvin ruled that Cindy Lee Garcia failed to show that she would likely prevail on the merits of her request, the Los Angeles Times reported.

YouTube owner Google had opposed Garcia’s emergency request, but Garcia’s lawyer, M. Cris Armenta, said Garcia would keep fighting to have it removed, according to the Times.

Read more here

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 (emphasis 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.

Pat Robertson Tells Husband He Should Become A Muslim And Beat His Wife

Donna Anderson
Infowars.com
September 17, 2012

Just weeks after telling the world that GOP Senate candidate Todd Akin had shot himself in the foot with his remarks about “legitimate” rape, Pat Robertson told a “700 Club” listener that he could become a Muslim and beat his wife in order to gain her respect. Has the entire Republican party lost its mind? Or do they really have such a low opinion of women?

During a September 10 broadcast of Robertson’s “700 Club” a caller asked how he could get his wife to respect him as the head of the house.

Robertson, a Southern Baptist, replied, “Well, you could become a Muslim and you could beat her. You can’t divorce her according the Scripture so I say move to Saudi Arabia.” After calling the woman a “rebellious child” that doesn’t want to “submit to any authority” he then added, “I don’t think we condone wife-beating these days but something has got to be done to make her.”

Naturally, Robertson’s statements have inflamed the Muslim community and Chris Roslan, a spokesman for the CBN, issued the following apology: “We regret these comments and subsequently edited them out of the later broadcast.

But this isn’t the first time Robertson has made outrageous remarks that suggest racism and a lack of respect for women.

On August 17, Robertson warned a female listener about “adopting children who have been sexually abused or deprived of food for risk that they may turn out to be weird.’”

An article at Christian Post says the conversation stemmed from a letter from a woman who complained of an unsuccessful dating life due to her three adopted daughters, who all came from different countries.

“A man doesn’t want to take on the United Nations, and a woman has all these various children, blended family, what is it – you don’t know what problems there are. I’m serious. I’ve got a dear friend, an adopted son, a little kid from an orphanage down in Columbia. Child had brain damage, grew up weird. And you just never know what’s been done to a child before you get that child. What kind of sexual abuse has been, what kind of cruelty, what kind of food deprivation, etc. etc.” Robertson said.

In the past, Robertson has described feminism as a “socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.”

Only a year ago Robertson made news with his advice to a man whose wife was suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease. The caller had begun to date another woman and wanted to know what to do. Roberson encouraged the husband to divorce his wife because she was, for all intents and puposes, already dead.

In the wake of Akin’s scandalous comments regarding “legitimate” rape and the female body being able to prevent pregnancy whenever it wanted to, Robertson tried to get the issue out of public focus, offering the following advice to Akin and the GOP:

“He screwed up. He made a dumb remark. So, don’t we all? It is time to say, okay, Todd, you’ve apologized. You misspoke. And let’s get on with life. Let’s run the campaign. The idea to form a circular firing squad and go after each other; Not smart.”

Hitting the campaign trail alongside Mitt Romney, Robertson has been openly criticizing the Democratic party, calling them “the party of gays, godlessness and whatever.”

The remarks made by people like Pat Robertson and Todd Akin, taken individually, may not seem that offensive. But given the facts that they’re all coming from the GOP side of the fence and we have no idea how many more similar comments are being made behind closed doors, one has to wonder: Does the GOP really care about women, or are they just after our votes?

Donna Anderson writes for Examiner.com

Optical Illusion of the Globalists: Al-Qaeda Attacking US Embassies Across the World

Susanne Posel, Contributor
Activist Post

On September 15th, Obama stated in his weekly address that the US “must also send a clear and resolute message to the world: those who attack our people will find no escape from justice.”

Obama asserts that:

We are in contact with governments around the globe, to strengthen our cooperation, and underscore that every nation has a responsibility to help us protect our people. We have moved forward with an effort to see that justice is done for those we lost, and we will not rest until that work is done.

US Embassies across the globe are coming under attack with coordinated efforts by the CIA-controlled al-Qaeda. In Sydney, Australia, 8 plants are being charged with inciting and participating in violent clashes with police and protesters at a rally sparked by the US-sponsored anti-Islamic film that is being blamed for this sudden uprising in the Islamic world.

The Tunisian government has come out to publicly condemn the attack in Libya. In their region, an American school and embassy compound was secured by Tunisian police against thousands of demonstrators who replaced an American flag with the flag of Islam, also looting and burning buildings.

The use of fake revolutionaries is also extending to Afghanistan at the US-British military complex where Prince Harry is stationed. Two US Marines have been confirmed killed while NATO forces are fighting against Taliban forces. This attack is being fueled by the anti-Islamic film, as demonstrators have assaulted the compound.

Sounding the alarm and calling for continued violence is the US-funded al-Qaeda in Yemen with a statement posted on Islamic militant websites implying that al-Qaeda is moving toward pushing protests within the Muslim nations incited by a film produced by the Zionist patsy, Sam Bacile.

The statement calls for protests to “expel the embassies of America from the lands of the Muslims” and to continue in Muslim nations “to set the fires blazing at these embassies.”

The statement continues by urging “our Muslim brothers in the West to fulfill their duties in supporting God’s prophet … because they are the most capable of reach them and vex them.”

A day before the orchestrated attack on the US Embassy in Libya, Senator Dianne Feinstein was warning about the violence witnessed in Arabic nations since the US Embassy bombing in Libya that will spark outrage against Americans and the United States. Feinstein said that according to the FBI and DHS these outbursts “could worsen in the coming days.”

In fact, the US government received a warning about the pending attack on the US Embassy in Libya days before it took place and did not act to prevent it. The military security surrounding the Embassy compound were stripped of their live ammunition prior to the attack.

The RAND Corporation — globalist think-tank and originator of many false flags and propaganda, surmises that between 2009 and 9/11, “the U.S. government reported forty-six incidents of ‘domestic radicalization and recruitment to jihadist terrorism.’ RAND went on to claim that Americans are playing a high level operational role in al-Qaeda and aligned groups.

Globalists point to al-Qaeda as the origin of radicalization, as evidenced with Anwar al-Awlaki who was purported to have opportunities to spread violent Islamic ideology in the United States. The use of social media sites and evangelical preachers could cause a boon in terrorist groups as explained by counterterrorism experts.

In a US Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs report, the radicalization of Islam is spreading throughout American prisons. There is also a growing possible movement within the US military wherein active duty soldiers are recruited to commit crimes.

Mainstream media is reporting that the FBI informant Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a.k.a. Sam Bacile, has been taken for questioning. After Nakoula was imprisoned in 2009 for banking fraud, he was employed as an informant for the FBI just before he was used as a patsy in the making of the film Innocence of Muslims that the US government is claiming they had no hand in producing. In order to cover their tracks, and facilitate the psy-op that convinces the American public that Islam and al-Qaeda are legitimate terrorists, the FBI is holding Nakoula for questioning.

At first, the Zionist-controlled Israeli government tried to assert that Nakoula was not an Israeli citizen; and, according to their intelligence, there was no record of Nakoula being in California.

Now the story has changed and Nakoula is a real person who can be used as a patsy to be condemned by the US government to justify their “official” version of what is happening.

As they create a fake revolution in the Islamic world with the aid of their fake terrorist group al-Qaeda, Nakoula is playing his part in the theater of lies.

The goal of the Zionists in the Middle East is to use fake Jihadists that are supported by NATO and the US against US embassies and military installations to create the belief that radicalization of Islamic ideology has erupted and must be controlled.

The UN’s International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), articles 18 and 27, state that minority religions and rights must be respected. Based on this fact, an Iranian senior official is claiming that a lawsuit could be filed against Obama in response to the anti-Islam film Innocence of Muslims and the US government’s involvement in the production of the film.

The resurrection of al-Qaeda from the 9/11 attacks within the US is not arbitrary. The misrepresentation of this fake revolution is designed to convince American citizens that there is a movement toward extremism within the United States.

The use of the anti-Islamic film combined with the resurgence of al-Qaeda has become reality only with the sacrifice of American citizens such as US Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and others with the goal of discrediting Islam as complete fanaticism and not a legitimate religion.

This entire scenario is obviously controlled by the Zionist control grid with the use of their puppets in the US government. CIA-sponsored al-Qaeda creates a protest after a film funded by Zionists and produced by the US government is disseminated throughout the Muslim world. On the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, we are faced with the outbreak of al-Qaeda once more; however, this time it is the entire Muslim world in every country on every continent we are supposed to be worried about. This seems to be the beginning of the absolute lockdown of the planet under the schemes of the Zionists with the aid of the US government.
Susanne Posel is the Chief Editor of Occupy Corporatism. Our alternative news site is dedicated to reporting the news as it actually happens; not as it is spun by the corporately funded mainstream media. You can find us on our Facebook page.

NY Times Spins New Video of Ambassador Stevens

Video shows Libyans celebrating Stevens’ death, NY Times claims men are rescuing him

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Monday, September 17, 2012

A new video which shows Libyans apparently celebrating the death of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens as his body is recovered from a U.S. Consulate in Benghazi following last week’s attack has been spun by the New York Times to portray the men as rescuers who are trying to save the Ambassador’s life, when in fact they are reveling in his death.

CAIRO — A crude video about the Prophet Muhammad that triggered an unprecedented outbreak of anti-American protest last week moved from being a YouTube obscurity in the United States to a touchstone for anger across the world through a phone call less than two weeks ago from a controversial U.S.-based anti-Islam activist to a reporter for an Egyptian newspaper.

Morris Sadek, a Coptic Christian who lives in suburban Washington, D.C., whose anti-Islam campaigning led to the revocation of his Egyptian citizenship earlier this year, had an exclusive story for Gamel Girgis, who covers Christian emigrants for al Youm al Sabaa, the Seventh Day, a daily newspaper here. Sadek had a movie clip he wanted Girgis to see; he e-mailed him a link.

“He told me he produced a movie last year and wanted to screen it on Sept. 11th to reveal what was behind the terrorists’ actions that day, Islam,” Girgis said, recalling the first call, which came on Sept. 4. Sadek, a longtime source, “considers me the boldest journalist, the only one that would publish such stories.”

Girgis said he watched the movie and found it insulting. He didn’t want to write about it. But Sadek called Girgis back and urged him to, telling him he could not deny that the movie existed.

Two days later, Sept. 6, Girgis published a three-paragraph article, calling the movie “shocking” and warning it could fuel sectarian tensions between Egyptian Christians and Muslims. Girgis concluded that the video “is just a passing crisis that doesn’t affect the bond between Muslims and Copts.”

In hindsight, that sentiment seems wildly optimistic. Five days later, thousands of Egyptians stormed the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and burned the American flag while as many as 125 armed men overwhelmed the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, killing the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans. Three days after that, protests in 23 countries included the sacking of the German embassy in Sudan and the burning of the American School in Tunisia.

Whether the Benghazi attack was linked to anger over the video remains uncertain – witnesses have said there was no protest preceding the attack – but the trauma of those deaths will likely scar U.S. perceptions for years, and while Saturday seemed calm across the region, the U.S. State Department made clear it fears the violence has not ended. In a statement, spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the Obama administration remained concerned about developments in Sudan.

“We have requested additional security precautions as a result of yesterday’s damage to our embassy.,” she said. “We are continuing to monitor the situation closely to ensure we have what we need to protect our people and facility.”

Sadek did not respond Saturday to requests for comment.

How Grigis’ short item spread is a reminder of how interconnected the world has become. An Islamic web forum picked up Girgis’ story the day after it was published. Girgis’ newspaper also ran an interview that day with Wisam Abdel Warith, the head of a television station, the Wisdom, that’s affiliated with the ultra conservative Salafist strain of Islam.

When asked about the movie, Warith urged the leaders of Egypt’s Coptic community to condemn the movie, though he gave no indication he had seen it.

“The Church has to reveal its position clearly,” Warith said. “Either it disclaims itself from those who produced the movie or it remains silent and that means they condone it.”

By Sept. 8, other newspapers started picking up the story. Al Youm al Sabaa ran another story, this time noting that Egyptian politicians criticized the movie.

But the story remained off the front pages, still considered a local piece about an Egyptian in America fueling a sectarian crisis here, not about how the West treats Islam. That was the case until last Sunday, when Khalid Abdullah, the premier commentator for al Nas, a popular Salafist television station, aired the clip on his show.

Abdullah’s co-host, Mohammed Hamdy, introduced the topic by apologizing for what he was about to share with his audience. He noted that the Coptic Christian church had condemned the movie, Sadek and Florida pastor Terry Jones, who Girgis wrote backed the movie as well. Jones’ threats to burn Qurans inflamed Muslims in 2010 and 2011.

The Coptic condemnation was important to note, Abdullah said, because “some will say we are inciting violence against Copts to create sectarianism” by airing the clip.

The scene aired on al Nas blurred the face of the woman, in accord with Salafist beliefs that a man should not engage with an uncovered woman who is not his wife. But it left the man’s image clear, even though Muslims are forbidden to make any attempt to recreate Muhammad.

“What is this stupidity?” Abdullah asked, after the station aired the clip, concluding later that the creators of the film “want to inflame Egypt.”

Abdullah asked if anyone had apologized for creating such a film. His co-host responded, “An apology is not enough. I want them convicted.”

That same day, the Mufti of Al Azhar University, the chief source of Sunni Islamic thought in the Arab world, condemned the clip for “insulting the prophet” and noting it was produced by “Copts living abroad.”

Facebook pages started appearing, urging Islamists and youth to protest Tuesday, the 11th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Jones had called for putting Muhammad on trial that day in a web message, which is why, protest organizers said, they scheduled it for that day. Calls started coming into the U.S. embassy as well, catching everyone there by surprise.

“People were writing to us asking what the role of the U.S. government has in this video. What are you going to do? Who produced this?” said one U.S. official at the embassy who did not want to be identified because he was not authorized to speak publicly. “Our initial response was: What video?”

But as the embassy learned about the planned protests and the video’s content, officials there said, they immediately recognized the potential problem. They called leaders of the groups calling for the protest and apologized for the film, according to recipients of the call. They told them the film does not represent how Americans see Islam. In a statement posted on the embassy’s web page, they condemned the video.

But it was too late. Nader Bakkar, a spokesman for the conservative Islamist Nour Party and one of those who received a phone call from the embassy in the hours before the scheduled protest, said there was no going back. It was now a religious duty to defend the prophet, he said.

On Monday, a day before the scheduled protest, newspapers reported on the upcoming protest, saying it was called because Americans must pay for allowing such a movie to be produced. Major newspapers wrote about the Coptic church disavowing the movie. Islamic groups called for those who produced the movie to be punished. Bakker told another the newspaper, al Masry al Youm, there should be a law that forbids insulting the prophet. “This is the least” that needs to happen, he said.

By mid afternoon Tuesday, protesters started gathering in front of the embassy, chanting against the United States. By 5 p.m. some scaled the 12-foot wall protecting the compound, set a ladder against the flagpole and brought down the American flag. They replaced it with an Islamic one. A protester handed the American flag to those sitting on top of the wall, and they began tearing at it. Whatever remained of the flag was eventually burned.

Five hours later, in neighboring Libya, attackers launched an assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, killing Ambassador Christopher Stevens, tech officer Sean Smith and former Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty.

The violence made the movie an international story, and Muslims across the world planned to gather Friday, after prayer, in response to a film most had never seen. At least seven people were killed and thousands of police officers were deployed around the world to protect U.S. sites.

Zaid Akl, a political analyst at Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, said the protests were about far more than the United States and its views on Islam. It was a means for frustrated Egyptians to rehash longstanding problems here – police abuse, unemployment, as well as defending the faith.

“These are same issues people protested in 2005 and 2010 and last year. Nothing has changed,” Akl said. “What is happening now is not conducive to any society-based dialogue.”

Girgis, for his part, never thought the story would go beyond Egypt.

“I regret publishing the story because of the events that took place in the Islamic world but I am a journalist, and it is news,” Girgis said. “If it wasn’t me publishing it, it would have been someone else.”

Morris Sadek, The ‘Maverick’ Egyptian-American Copt Behind Anti-Islamic Film ‘Innocence Of Islam’

Religion News Service  |  By Daniel Burke Posted: 09/14/2012 5:47 pm EDT Updated: 09/14/2012 5:47 pm EDT

(RNS) When inflamed mobs stormed the U.S. embassies in Libya and Egypt on Tuesday (Sept. 11), the media quickly looked to a likely spark.

Florida Pastor Terry Jones ignited deadly riots by threatening to burn Qurans in 2010, and by torching the Islamic holy text last year. Recently, Jones said he would promote a crude film that portrays Islam’s Prophet Muhammad as a foolish sexual pervert.

But in the days before the protests, Jones made no public mention of the film, called “Innocence of Muslims,” even as he prepared to stage an “International Judge Muhammad Day” on Sept. 11.

Instead, the man who translated the film into Arabic, sent it to Egyptian journalists, promoted it on his website and posted it on social media was an obscure Egyptian-born Coptic Christian who lives near Washington and proudly touts his ties to Jones.

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. Sadek says on his website that he is a member of the Egyptian and Washington, D.C. bar associations who has “defended major human rights cases” including the late Coptic Pope Shenouda III, who died in March.

But fellow Copts depict Sadek as a fringe figure and publicity hound whose Islamophobic invectives disrupt Copts’ quest for equal religious rights in Egypt.

“Mr. Sadek is a maverick who belongs to a very narrow extreme current of Coptic activists,” the Washington-based group Coptic Solidarity said in a statement. “He likes to use inflammatory and abrasive language to insult Muslims and Islam. As his actions agitate more the Islamic extremists, some people wonder if he is not in fact working to fulfill their agenda.”

Cynthia Farahat, Coptic Solidarity’s director of advocacy, said Sadek “has done a lot of harmful things for Copts in Egypt.”

“Every single thing he says is used by Islamists to justify terrorism against Copts,” Farahat said.

According to the Egyptian Independent newspaper, Sadek was banned from entering Egypt and had his citizenship revoked in May 2011 because he called for war against the country.

As protests against the anti-Muslim film spread throughout the Middle East and Africa, Palestinian protesters shredded posters of Sadek and Egyptians chanted his name, according to international reports.

While the Egyptian protests appear to have been incited by the anti-Muslim film, the Obama administration is investigating the possibility that al-Qaida plotted the Libyan attack to mark the anniversary of 9/11.

Sadek’s Facebook account and Twitter feed are rife with anti-Islamic sentiments, as is his website, where he is described in one media report as “ignorant” and “crazy.” A YouTube video dated to 2010 shows the 69-year-old wearing a cowboy hat and waving an American flag and gold crucifix while shouting “Islam is evil!” outside the National Press Building in Washington.

A photo on his website shows Sadek with Jones, whom he calls a “Bible hero,” at a small protest outside the White House.

On Sept. 6, Sadek emailed journalists around the world, promoting Jones’ anti-Islamic event and including footage of “Innocence of Muslims,” according to The Wall Street Journal. A conservative TV host in Egypt broadcast the video on Sept. 8, sparking protests at the U.S. embassy in Cairo.

“I really think Morris just wanted to get famous in the Egyptian media,” said Michael Meunier, president of the Washington-based U.S. Copts Association. Sadek “wanted to steal the work of someone else to gain fame in the media and the result is now clear,” Meunier said.

Sadek has said that he hyped the film to highlight the plight of Christians in Egypt.

“I am only (leading) a Coptic organization that promoted the film. I am only interested in the first part about persecution of Copts,” he told Reuters. The trailer’s first minutes show Egyptian police standing idle as Copts’ homes are ransacked by bearded marauders.

Details about the film’s makers remain sketchy, but the AP reports that Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a 55-year-old Coptic Christian who lives in Southern California, said he managed logistics for the company that produced it. Nakoula also told the AP that he is concerned about Muslims’ treatment of Coptic Christians.

According to the Pew Research Center, Egypt’s 7 million Copts — about 10 percent of the population — have been barred from building churches and applying for government jobs, among other restrictions. Since the onset of the Arab Spring, Coptic churches have been pillaged and torched. Fears have intensified since the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood won power in June.

Sadek’s promotion of the anti-Islam film may backfire against Copts, Meunier said.

“These activities are being used now for political gains by the Islamists because they are trying to rally their supporters to vote for the constitution they are drafting,” he said. “They also stated that they will have to put safeguards in the new constitution against similar insults in Egypt. What they mean is that we are going to put even more articles to curb freedom in the new constitution.”

Sadek told Reuters that he felt sorry about the deaths in Libya, where four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, were killed. He did not respond to requests for comment from Religion News Service.

Brent McBurney, president of Advocates International, a human rights firm in Washington, said Sadek volunteered on cases involving persecuted Copts in Egypt from 1999-2000.
“But as his views became more and more askew we disaffiliated ourselves from him,” McBurney said.

Right Wing Watch Entry: Morris Sadek

Morris Sadek, an Egyptian-American anti-Muslim activist, managed in one week’s time to take an overlooked YouTube video featuring a lame attack on Islam and turn it into a flashpoint with violent extremists, with deadly consequences. As the New York Times reported last night, Sadek drew attention to the obscure video clip “in an Arabic-language blog post and an e-mail newsletter in English publicizing the latest publicity stunt of the Florida pastor Terry Jones, reviled in the Muslim world for burning copies of the Koran.” Within days the clip was making the rounds in Egypt, prompting denunciations from politicians and generating press coverage, and culminating in protests and a deadly attack in Libya.