LOS ANGELES (AP) — A
California-based filmmaker went into hiding after a YouTube trailer of
his movie attacking Islam's prophet Muhammad sparked angry assaults by
ultra-conservative Muslims on U.S. missions in Egypt and Libya. The U.S.
ambassador to Libya and three American members of his staff were
killed.
Speaking by phone Tuesday 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. Libyan officials said Wednesday
that Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed Tuesday night when he and a
group of embassy employees went to the consulate to try to evacuate
staff as the building came under attack by a mob firing machine guns and
rocket propelled grenades.
Bacile said he is a real estate
developer and an Israeli Jew. But Israeli officials said they had not
heard of him and there was no record of him being a citizen. They spoke
on condition of anonymity because they are not permitted to share
personal information with the media.
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," Bacile told the AP. "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 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.
The14-minute trailer of the movie that reportedly set off the protests,
posted on the website YouTube in an original English version and another
dubbed into Egyptian Arabic, 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.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.
Protesters destroy an American flag pulled down from the U.S. embassy in Cairo, Egypt, Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2012.
