A provocative film that ridicules Prophet Muhammad has stirred the anger of Muslims and sparked bloody riots in two African countries.

Late yesterday, Egypt and Libya were on fire as irate Muslims rioted over an offensive film produced in America by an American citizen and being promoted by an Egyptian-born Christian in the US known for his anti-Islam views.

The film is yet to be released but its 14-minute trailer posted on the website YouTube in an original English version and another dubbed into Egyptian Arabic was enough to stoke the anger of Muslims in Egypt and Libya, resulting in violent riots. The trailer, according to an Associated Press report, “depicts Muhammad as a fraud, a womanizer and a madman in an overtly ridiculing way, showing him having sex and calling for massacres.”

The movie was intended to show how Coptic Christians are oppressed in Egypt, according to Sam Bacile, the American who produced, directed and wrote the two-hour film, and Morris Sadek, the Egyptian-born but US-based Christian who is promoting it. Both men said they had not anticipated the furious reaction of protesters, who shot an American to death and burned the US consulate in Benghazi (Libya) and scaled the walls of the US Embassy in Cairo, the Egyptian capital, replacing an American flag with an Islamic banner in what was the first such assaults on US diplomatic facilities in either country.

“I feel sorry for the embassy. I am mad,” said Bacile, the film’s producer.

But Sadek appeared unmoved, saying that the protests by angry Muslims would only serve to promote the movie. “They don’t know dialogue and they think that Islam will be offended from a movie,” he stated.

A YouTube spokesman was quoted as saying that the website would not take down the video yet since the website’s policy is to remove videos that include a threat of violence, but not those only expressing opinions.

“We take great care when we enforce our policies and try to allow as much content as possible while ensuring that our Community Guidelines are followed,” the YouTube representative said. “Flagged content that does not violate our Guidelines will remain on the site.”

News Express reports that Muslims never take kindly to any depiction of Prophet Muhammad, especially in an insulting way. An example was the 2005 publication of 12 caricatures of Prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper, which triggered riots in many Muslim countries.

*Photo, courtesy AP/Yahoo!, shows protesters in action at US Embassy in Cairo, Egypt . . . late yesterday.

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