As if the outrage against the anti-Muslim film “Innocence of Muslims” wasn’t enough, the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday published an issue containing several caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. The move seems likely to further inflame passions incited earlier this month in the Muslim world by the release of a trailer for a strikingly Islamophobic film in the US.

Not to be outdone, Germany’s leading satire magazine Titanic is likewise jumping into the fray with an Islam issue of its own, set for publication later this month. The cover story imagines what it might look like if Germany’s embattled former first lady, Bettina Wulff, were to make a Muhammad film of her own. Many are concerned that the publication could make Germany even more of a target of Muslim anger than it already is.Titanic most recently made headlines in Germany in July with a cover depicting Pope Benedict XVI soiling himself front and back accompanied by the headline “The Leak Has Been Found,” a play on the Vatileaks scandal. The Catholic Church initially took legal action against the publication but has since backed down.

In light of the decision to move ahead with a cover story on Islam, SPIEGEL ONLINE spoke with Titanic Editor-in-Chief Leo Fischer about satire and the fine line between humor and right-wing propaganda.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What do you think of the Muhammad caricatures in the most recent issue of Charlie Hebdo?

Fischer: They aren’t the kind of caricatures that could appear in Titanic. They are relatively simplistic. But given the protests in the Muslim world, during which people have even been killed, the publication of the drawings is a relatively peaceful and harmless reaction. The editors of Charlie Hebdo haven’t killed anyone.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: It is a touchy situation. On the one hand, the satirists of Charlie Hebdo point to the freedom of the press. On the other hand, however, they are putting wind in the sails of Islamophobes.

Fischer: Nobody wants support from the wrong side. If satire simply attracts extremists in a vacuum, then it is right-wing satire. Furthermore, insults without cause are boring. When we did the pope cover …

SPIEGEL ONLINE: … the July issue showing Pope Benedict XVI soiling himself accompanied by the headline “The Leak Has Been Found” …

Fischer: … many sneered that we wouldn’t have had the courage to do a similar cover with Muhammad. But the satirical cover was concretely linked to the Vatileaks affair. Now, everybody is talking about Muhammad and we are reacting. Cheap provocations such as the film “Innocence of Muslims” inflame people around the world — one can imagine that in such a situation Bettina Wulff (eds. note: the wife of former German President Christian Wulff who recently published her controversial memoirs) might also try to attract support with cheap criticism of Islam. We find that objectionable.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Does the image on your cover depict Muhammad?

Fischer: I don’t know for sure. It is a scene from a film.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: It could be that not all Muslims around the world will understand your humor.

Fischer: That could be. But we are on the side of the protesters. I am afraid that Bettina Wulff could provide further impetus for the current unrest in the Muslim world.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Or is it Titanic itself that is fomenting this unrest?

Fischer: We see ourselves as being completely on the side of the believers.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Are you also on the side of those who attempt to increase their circulation with Muslim jokes?

Fischer: Titanic has never had an extensive number of German-Muslim readers. Should this issue result in new subscribers among Muslim satire fans, I would have nothing against it.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: The cover of the current issue of Charlie Hebdo shows a Muslim in a wheelchair being pushed by a Jew under a headline saying that you can’t make fun of either of them. Isn’t that just standard right-wing screed to the effect that it is impossible to speak freely about Muslims and Jews?

Fischer: I interpret the cover differently. I think it is a reference to the film “The Intouchables.”

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Nevertheless, Titanic is not particularly known for joking about Jews.

Fischer: There you are mistaken. At the height of the affair surrounding Günter Grass’ Israel poem called “What Must Be Said” we had an issue called “The Truth about Jews.”

SPIEGEL ONLINE: One can imagine that Grass might even agree with Charlie Hebdo that it is not possible to speak freely about Jews.

Fischer: That would, of course, be completely grotesque. People are constantly claiming that it is taboo to criticize Israel publicly. Grass, though, published his Israel-critical poem in the (German daily) Süddeutsche Zeitung. Is that not public?

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Charlie Hebdo has now received support from the far-right in France, including from the leader of the Front National Marine Le Pen.

Fischer: They are just gratefully grabbing at the magazine’s coattails. It is a transparent strategy.SPIEGEL ONLINE: Do you personally feel threatened by extremists?

Fischer: I consider the view that European Muslims are nothing more than sword-swinging crazies to be racist. I am relying on their understanding — and on their indifference.

Earlier on Tuesday, scholars at Egypt’s influential Al-Azhar mosque condemned the film ridiculing Prophet Muhammad produced by an Israeli-American real-estate developer in California, Sam Bacile, and promoted by among others Florida-based Christian evangelist Terry Jones, whose burning of a Quran sparked riots in Afghanistan in 2011. The condemnation and news about the movie moved like wildfire across Islamist Facebook pages. Salafi preachers took to Islamist satellite channels to add their fury.

The two-hour film of a symbolic “trial” of the Muslim prophet has not been shown yet, but a 14-minute trailer of the movie was posted on YouTube both in an English version and another dubbed into Arabic. The movie, Innocence of Muslims, depicts Muhammad as a fraud and a womanizer. Bacile told reporters that he doesn’t know who dubbed the film. Terry Jones said that the film shows “the destructive ideology of Islam,” adding that the attacks in Benghazi and Cairo demonstrate that Muslims “have no tolerance.”

The trailer for the movie can be viewed here: The Innocence of Muslims Movie Trailer.

Lets just say that Sam Bacile is no Salman Rushdie.

The movie is of a quality that is several degrees below horrid, the amateur and crude nature of the production render it devoid of any artistic value. Forget about any real, accurate, historical basis for the depiction of Prophet Muhammad, he is assigned all the usual Orientalist, Islamophobic characterizations: child molester, murderer, forcibly converting non-believers, bastard seed of an unknown father, sadist and oddly as having a homosexual relationship with the second Caliph Umar.

The fact that the intent behind the film was a bigotry laced attempt at provocation rather than a critical or irreverent look at the life of Prophet Muhammad is confirmed by Bacile himself,

[A]ccording to one of Bacile’s consultants on the film, Steve Klein, the two knew full well that their incendiary movie would provoke violent reprisals…Bacile told The Wall Street Journal’s Matt Bradley and Dion Nissenbaum that “Islam is a cancer” adding that “The movie is a political movie. It’s not a religious movie.”

The movie was produced several months ago, screening to a mostly empty theater in Hollywood and elicited no reaction. This trash movie would have been relegated to the garbage bin of history if it weren’t dubbed into Egyptian Arabic. The dubbed version went viral on Egyptian and Libyan Facebook pages and networks, resulting in the protests that we witnessed yesterday and today.

The movie feeds already existing anti-Western sentiments as well as narratives in the region of an American-led Western War on Islam, an overall disrespect and intolerance for Muslim culture and symbols, and a sense that the West is a bastion of hypocrisy, decadence and uncivilized conduct. Opportunistic Egyptian media outlets, politicians and preachers have exploited the video for their own causes, in effect generating and energizing a movie that should simply have been ignored, or at the most mocked and scorned for how over-the-top terrible it is.

The protesters reaction on the other hand will fuel perceptions in the West that Muslims (though there were only several thousand mostly fundamentalist protesters) cannot distinguish between the free speech of its citizens and the positions and actions of governments. It will also fuel the perception that Muslims cannot properly handle offensive speech directed against those personages or symbols they hold as sacred without reacting irrationally and violently.

This mutual miscomprehension will continue so long as both sides remain wantonly ignorant of where the other side is coming from, and as long as those voices vested in promoting hatred and bigotry on both sides are amplified.

In a turn for the worst we have also learned that tragically, the US Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stephens along with three members of his staff have died in an attack on the US consulate,

The US ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, has died from smoke inhalation in an attack on the US consulate in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, the country’s interior ministry and security sources have said.

…

The ambassador was paying a short visit to the city when the consulate came under attack on Tuesday night, Al Jazeera’s Suleiman El-Dressi reported from Benghazi.

He died of suffocation during the attack, along with two US security personnel who were accompanying him, security sources told Al Jazeera. Another consulate employee, whose nationality could not immediately be confirmed, was also killed.

Two other staff were injured, El-Dressi reported. The deaths were confirmed by Wanis al-Sharif, the Libyan deputy interior minister, to the AFP news agency.

According to several reports the attackers used the protest as a “diversion” to launch an attack on the consulate that had been planned well in advance,

U.S. officials say the embassy attack in Libya may have been a coordinated attack planned ahead of time. That follows a report by CNN citing sources that say the attackers used the film protests as a “diversion” to reach the embassy.

There is no excuse for violently reacting to such a poorly made and clearly incendiary movie, ever; in fact it is surreal, like something out of a salivating Islamophobes wildest dream.

There is a lot here that is oddly coincidental, why is this happening right around the time of the 11th anniversary of 9/11? Once again a movie is the center of attention during a tight presidential race involving Barack Obama and his Republican opponent; in 2008 it was Obsession, this year it seems to be The Innocence of Muslims.

Finally, I want to add that we should not be surprised that violence based in ignorance has surfaced. If rampant and ignorant anti-Muslim Islamophobia expressing itself violently can rear its ugly head in a stable, prosperous and wealthy nation like the United States, how can we expect that hateful anti-Muslim propaganda won’t lead to emotional and violent anti-American protests in countries that have weak, transitioning governments, poor economies and significant levels of illiteracy?

Related Posts:

-The tragic consulate killings in Libya and America’s hierarchy of human life

-WHY ARE ALL THE RELIGIOUS REFERENCES IN “INNOCENCE OF MUSLIMS” DUBBED?

UPDATE I:

Looks like Sarah Abdurrahman’s suspicion that the actors in the Muhammad movie were deceived has turned out to be true. (h/t: BBoyBlue)

The story of the Muhammed movie which sparked deadly protests in Libya gets weirder. The actors who appeared in it had no idea they were starring in anti-Islam propaganda which depicts Muhammed as a child molester and thug. They were deceived by the film’s director, believing they were appearing in a film about the life of a generic Egyptian 2,000 years ago.

Cindy Lee Garcia, an actress from Bakersfield, Calif., has a small role in the Muhammed movie as a woman whose young daughter is given to Muhammed to marry. But in a phone interview this afternoon, Garcia told us she had no idea she was participating in an offensive spoof on the life of Muhammed when she answered a casting call through an agency last summer and got the part.

The script she was given was titled simply Desert Warriors.

“It was going to be a film based on how things were 2,000 years ago,” Garcia said. “It wasn’t based on anything to do with religion, it was just on how things were run in Egypt. There wasn’t anything about Muhammed or Muslims or anything.”

In the script and during the shooting, nothing indicated the controversial nature of the final product. Muhammed wasn’t even called Muhammed; he was “Master George,” Garcia said. The words Muhammed were dubbed over in post-production, as were essentially all other offensive references to Islam and Muhammed.

Update II: Israel says filmmaker not an Israeli citizen. (h/t: Markorov)

By AP and Times of Israel staff September 12, 2012
Consultant on film says producer uses fake name and identity as part of disinformation campaign.