Background
On July 2nd, 2012, YouTuber SamBacile uploaded two 13-minute video clips titled “The Real Life of Muhammad” and “Muhammad Movie Trailer,” which showed excerpts from a full-length feature film titled Innocence of Muslims, produced and directed by Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a Coptic Christian immigrant from Egypt living in Cerritos, California.
The film remained largely obscure until early September 2012, when duplicate videos dubbed in the Arabic language were uploaded onto YouTube and picked up by Egyptian bloggers and news publications, triggering a series of anti-American protests in the wake of the videos that have been characterized as “anti-Islamic.”
Notable Developments
The original trailer clips titled “The Real Life of Muhammad” and “Muhammad Movie Trailer” were uploaded onto YouTube by Nakoula Basseley Nakoula on July 1st and 2nd, 2012. However, the two video clips did not receive massive exposure until months later in September, when an Arabic-dubbed version of the original film was re-uploaded onto YouTube. On September 8th, the video was subsequently picked up and broadcast by the Egyptian TV station Al-Nas, which triggered large scale anti-American protests outside the U.S. Embassy buildings in Egypt as well as Libya.
Online Reactions
On September 11th, 2012, YouTuber Sam Bacile posted a comment in Egyptian Arabic confirming the origin of the film in another YouTube video uploaded two days earlier by Al-Nahar TV.
“Idiots, this is an American film 100%.”
External References
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