CounterVortex

The jihad against a non-existent “film” produced by non-existent “Jews” continues to claim lives, with the most recent attack Sept. 23 launched by militants in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula on Israeli troops guarding the border, killing one and wounding another. AFP informs us that an outfit calling itself Ansar Bait al-Maqdis (Partisans of Jerusalem) took credit for the attack, calling it a “Disciplinary Invasion Against those who Dared Against the Beloved Prophet.” The statement posted on Islamist websites read: “As the defence of the honour of the Messenger of Allah is one of our duties and responsibilities, your brothers…carried their weapons and became determined to discipline the Jews for their heinous acts.” Hey, read the small print, willya Ansar Bait al-Maqdis? “The Jews” had nothing to do with this one—the non-existent “film” (really just a “trailer” on YouTube) was produced by a Coptic Christian who cynically assumed the fabricated identity of an Israeli-American, and falsely claimed to have Jewish financial backers. Talk about “Anti-Semitism without Jews.”

Jihadist yahoos are also targeting the “actors” in the “film” with death threats—despite the fact that they were obviously duped (the original script made no reference to Islam or Mohammed; their voices were stripped out and replaced with a dubbed script for the inflammatory “trailer”). One of the “actors,” Cindy Lee Garcia, is actually suing the producer, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, and also seeking damages from YouTube and Google. (LAT, Sept. 21; TMZ, Sept. 19)

In Pakistan, a government-called Youm-e-Ishq-e-Rasool (Love of Prophet Muhammad Day) to condemn the non-existent “film” was observed throughout the country after Friday prayers on Sept. 21. But it got out control in several cities, with rioting, looting and 20 killed. Two police officers were among the dead in Karachi, according to Pakistan’s Express-Tribune.

Pakistan’s government has thankfully reprimanded a cabinet minister, Ghulam Ahmed Bilour, for his offer of a reward for killing the “producer” of the “film.” Bilour, the railways minister, offered a $100,000 bounty for the death of the non-existent “Sam Bacile,” apparently not having gotten word that this is a fabricated identity. “I announce today that this blasphemer, who has abused the holy prophet—if somebody will kill him, I will give that person a prize of $100,000,” he said, especially inviting members of the Taliban and al-Qaeda to carry out the “noble deed.” (Al-Arabiya, Sept. 23)

A particularly perverse irony to this sad affair is that it comes just as Salman Rushdie has released a memoir of his years in hiding from the fatwa issued against him by Ayatollah Khomeini for passages deemed blasphemous in his 1988 novel, The Satanic Verses. Rushdie’s website tells us that the memoir is called Joseph Anton after the alias he took while living incognito—the first names of two of his literary heros, Conrad and Chekhov.  We can only imagine that Rushdie is aghast at the inevitable comparison of his work and this cowardly, conniving, malevolent piece of garbage that everyone insists on calling a “film” without quotation marks even though it isn’t. Further evidence of Marx’s famous dictum that history repeats itself—”the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”