Tag: Sam Bacile

Muslims Call for End to Vilification of Islam – 2012

Muslims Call for End to Vilification of Islam: A protest close to Google’s offices on Sunday 14th October 2012 called on them to withdraw a short anti-Islamic video and other Islamophobic material from their YouTube channel.

Muslims Call for End to Vilification of Islam - 2012
Muslim men show their anger over the film

The video, variously titled but mainly known as Innocence of Muslims was first uploaded to YouTube in July 2012 in an English language version but was the dubbed in Arabic in early September that year.

Muslims Call for End to Vilification of Islam - 2012
The protest was on Buckingham Palace Road, next to Victoria Station, where Google had its UK HQ

Wikipedia quotes a Vanity Fair review of the video: “Exceptionally amateurish, with disjointed dialogue, jumpy editing, and performances that would have looked melodramatic even in a silent movie, the clip is clearly designed to offend Muslims, portraying Mohammed as a bloodthirsty murderer, Lothario and pedophile with omnidirectional sexual appetites.“

Muslims Call for End to Vilification of Islam - 2012
At first the protest was in one carriageway only and a large pen was filled with Muslim men, with speakers and screen at the far end

The videos were apparently trailers for a full length film called ‘Desert Warrior’ which had been filmed as being about life in Egypt 2,000 years by US non-profit Media for Christ, but in post-production was altered by directory Nakoula Basseley Nakoula , working under the pseudonym Sam Bacile, to be crudely and explicitly anti-Islamic, much to the disgust of at least some of its actors. It isn’t clear if the full film was ever completed, although an early version was apparently screened once in California to an audience of ten people.

Muslims Call for End to Vilification of Islam - 2012

Its director was arrested in late September in Los Angeles under various charges related to the making of the film and his use of the alias “Sam Bacile”, and later sentenced to a year in prison and 4 years of parole.

Muslims Call for End to Vilification of Islam - 2012

The videos on YouTube led to protests around the world, including in the Middle East, North Africa, Asia and Europe, some violent with “over 50 deaths, including 23 in Pakistan.” The protest in London was a peaceful one, organised by the Muslim Action Forum who called on YouTube to remove the video and for the the UK Government and other organisations to endorse a ‘Declaration of Global Civility.’

Soon more men arrived and the protest spilled out across the whole road

The UK government Commission for Countering Extremism in 2024 commissioned an independent report into Blasphemy Extremism in the UK, which incorrectly states that the The Muslim Action Forum “first emerged in 2015 when it organised a large protest outside of Downing Street to express anger over plans by Charlie Hebdo to republish its 2012 cartoons of Mohammed.”

Had the authors looked at My London Diary they would have known it was organising protests in 2012, and that it was founded following a meeting of “over 100 leading Muslim Scholars, Spiritual leaders and representatives of major Muslim organisations” in Birmingham in September 2012.

I had first thought there were no women at the protest, but then saw this block beyond where the men were saying prayers

In my post on My London Diary I made my own comments about the MAF and their Declaration of Global Civility, in particular noting “What many might feel is missing from the declaration is the lack of any reference or acknowledgement to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which was adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1948 and is the foundation of our ideas of what a civilised society should be.”

I also commented that “global civility should include rather more tolerance for the expression of views which are abhorrent to you, and should certainly preclude the kind of violent responses that this film has aroused in some Muslim countries.” And I commented on the way that women were marginalised in the protest, kept at some distance from the speakers and the men, with no women speakers.

You can read my lengthy account of the protest and seem many more pictures I took at the event on My London Diary: End the Vilification of Islam.

The previous weekend I had photographed another peaceful London protest against these films: Muslims against Anti-Muslim Film.

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Nine years ago: 6 Oct 2012

Proposals to close Accident and Emergency services at four of the nine hospitals in North West London provoked fury among local residents and opposition from local councils as they would mean slow journeys over heavily congested roads for those living in much of northwest London. The proposals seemed to be motivated simply by cost savings with no regard to the consequences.

This protest was one of a number that I photographed, particularly about the closure of A&E and some other services at both Charing Cross Hospital (which is in Hammersmith) and Ealing Hospital. The previous month I had photographed a http://mylondondiary.co.uk/2012/09/sep.htm#hospitals large march from Southall Park to Ealing Hospital against the closure plan and there was another march to Central Middlesex Hospital taking place that same day.

These large and widespread protests and legal actions taken by the protesters were almost certainly a major factor behind the decision in March 2019 by then Health Secretary Matt Hancock to finally scrap the plans for what was the biggest hospital closure programme in the history of the NHS. The campaigners welcomed the decision but said it should have come much earlier rather than after seven years of the Dept of Health supporting the plans, which would have involved demolishing Charing Cross Hospital and selling off most the site.

I photographed as people gathered for the march in Shepherds Bush but had to leave as the march was setting off for Hammersmith and a rally in Fulham to go to Westminster.

Britain First, a far-right anti-Muslim movement (it describes itself as “a modern, responsible patriotic political movement”) was protesting at Downing St against what they described as ‘Britain’s secret shame – Muslim Grooming’ and were joined on their protest by members of other extremist groups including the English Defence League. After protesting for around an hour at Downing St they marched the short distance to Parliament Square where they tried to burn an Islamic flag. It proved to be rather fire-resistant.

A few yards away, thousand of Muslims packed Old Palace Yard opposite the Houses of Parliament in a peaceful protest against an Anti-Muslim film made in the USA. They called for laws to protect religious figures.

The film, Innocence of Muslims, a crude video made by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakoula_Basseley_Nakoula Egyptian-born American writer Mark Basseley Youssef had already prompted violent anti-American protests in various Muslim countries. Youssef was then in jail in Los Angeles for violations of a probation order which, among other things included making false statements regarding his role in the film, and his use of the alias “Sam Bacile”. He had a previous conviction for in 1997 for intent to manufacture methamphetamine and was under probation following release in June 2011 from being jailed in 2010 for his part in a bank fraud.

Youssef, under his alias Bacile, falsely claimed that the anti-Islamic film had been funded by $5 million from 100 Jewish donors and that he was an Israeli Jew. An Egyptian court tried him and others in absentia and sentenced them to death for defaming Islam in November 2012. He was released from prison in 2013 to serve the remainder of his sentence in a halfway house in Californinia followed by 4 years of probabation.

Finally I travelled to Kilburn for a march and rally demanding Brent council rehouse the Counihan family from South Kilburn. Two years earlier, Anthony Counihan, a London bus driver inherited a few acres of poor land in Galway on the death of his father. Rented out, it brings an income of £18 a week.

He reported this to Brent Council, who responded with an eviction order and a demand for repayment of £70,000 of housing benefit, later telling him he should move back with his family to Ireland where he was born – while continuing to drive a bus from Cricklewood Depot. His wife Isabel and five children were all born in Brent.

The case was complicated by the fact that the family had moved out of a council property to go back to Ireland for a year to look after his sick father, and had signed away their lease as the council had not told them they could sublet for the year, and by their treatment by the council after their return, when they were unable to find accomodation they could afford on a bus-drivers salary. Brent decided they had made themselves “intentionally homeless” and were refusing their statutory duty to rehouse the family.

More on all at:
Rehouse the Counihans
Muslims against Anti-Muslim Film
Britain First – Muslim Grooming
Save Our Hospitals – Shepherds Bush