Free speech vs. reverence for Muhammad: Can they coexist?
The violence in Egypt, Libya, and Yemen show the results of American ideals clashing with those of nascent Arab democracies. Caught in between are American Muslims.
By Patrik Jonsson, Staff writer / September 13, 2012
The continuing
protests in the Middle East over a low-budget American-made film that
insults the Prophet Muhammad have laid bare the clash of two
fundamentally different worldviews that are increasingly colliding yet show few
signs of compromise.
Americans demand that Muslims
respect one of the cornerstones of their nation – free speech – while
Muslims demand that Americans respect the revered place that Muhammad holds in
their faith. American ideals, broadcast over YouTube
and Facebook,
have met Mideast democracy in its still-raw
forms post-Arab Spring, and the results have been combustible.
Caught in between are American
Muslims, who overwhelmingly reject violence and broadly support free-speech
rights but also feel anger and frustration at depictions of Muhammad they find
grievously offensive.
“It’s really unfortunate,” says
Deanna Nassar, the Hollywood liaison for the Muslim Public Affairs Council, which works to correct
stereotypes about Muslims. US Muslims “take steps forward, and we take
steps back, and this is clearly a big step back.”
The concern is partly about
retaliation against Muslims in the US,
but more about what the episode will do to many Americas’
already skeptical attitudes toward Muslims, says Ebrahim Mossa, a professor of
Islamic studies at Duke University in Durham, N.C.
The YouTube trailer of the film at
the center of the furor, “Innocence
of Muslims,” paints Muhammad as a murderous philanderer. Since Tuesday,
protests have broken out in Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, with
the US ambassador to Libya and three staff members killed at the US consulate in Benghazi
Tuesday.
One Egyptian protester said the
violence was a natural response to the film. “This is a very simple reaction to
harming our prophet,” Abdel-Hamid Ibrahim told AP. Egyptian
President Mohammed Morsi, a member of the Muslim
Brotherhood party, has been slow to reject the violence.
By contrast, American leaders have
unanimously condemned of the violence. Some, including Secretary
of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, also singled out the film as “disgusting
and reprehensible.” But none suggested that US should ban it.
Indeed, when a tweet by the US
Embassy in Cairo appeared to sympathize with the protesters, saying the US
“condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious
feelings of Muslims,” it was pilloried by Republican presidential candidate Mitt
Romney, who called the statement “disgraceful.”
The Baltimore Sun’s editorial board echoed his sentiment
Wednesday when it wrote: “The only responsibility the United
States, as a government and as a society, bears for the offensive and
misguided sentiments expressed in this film is to have created a system in
which speech is protected even when it is abhorrent, and that is something we
will not change and which we cannot hide.”
A recent Public Religion Research Institute survey found that 47
percent of Americans say the values of Islam are at odds with American values.
Yet among US Muslims, 6 in 10 say they see no conflicts between being a devout
Muslim and living in modern society – precisely the same ratio as devout
American Christians answering the question in the same way, according to a 2011
Gallup poll.
To be sure, a majority of Muslims
say violence is an inappropriate response – even to such brazen blasphemy,
pollsters say.
“The vast majority of Muslims would
definitely be offended by the movie, but I don’t think the vast majority of
people support to any degree the notion that the US
ambassador should be targeted,” says Mohamed Younis, a senior analyst at the Gallup Center
for Muslim Studies in Washington.
“In Egypt, there’s an overwhelming majority of people who say you cannot target
civilians, and similarly in Libya, we don’t see any overwhelming support for
the idea that [blaspheming the Prophet should lead to] targeting and killing
civilians.”
In some quarters, the notion that
blasphemy against Muhammad should punishable by death is being quietly
challenged by some scholars who say it is not scriptural but traditional. “That
whole doctrine has now come up for a lot of debate among Muslim theologians,
but only the bravest ones can touch this thing, because it comes at one heck of
a cost,” says Professor Moosa of Duke.
Indeed, for some American Muslims,
the outbreak of violence in the Middle East
begs that deeper question: What does it mean faithfully to follow the teachings
of Muhammad?
“That’s the baffling thing to me,
above all, when it comes down to it, when your goal is to honor and protect the
dignity of the Prophet, it seems to me that the best way to do this is to
follow his example and how he would respond to something like this, and his
response was always consistently to be kind and to forgive,” says Ms. Nassar of
the Muslim Public Affairs Council.
“As Muslims, we have to become more
confident in our faith and belief, and in our Prophet, and know the Prophet is
going to be just fine – his character stands alone and our job is to exemplify
that character, period,” she says. “Yes, it hurts my feelings when I see things
about the Prophet, but it hurts even more to see the violence perpetrated in
response to it.”
What also hurts is that so much of
the misunderstanding appears to be born of willful ignorance.
“My argument would be that a lot
has been written against Islam and about the Quran and the Prophet in the last
10, 15 years, and most of it has not been written at an intellectual level,”
says Naeem Baig, a spokesman for the Islamic Circle of North America, a social service
organization with at least 16,000 members and 36 chapters throughout the
country. “If there’s an intellectual debate [about theological law], we can
understand that, but when it is done solely for the purpose of ridiculing
something, does that serve a purpose?”
“This is unfortunate and sad, and
especially that [Ambassador] Christopher Stevens was killed,” he adds. “Right now, it’s
just very sad for me, I’m just trying to cope, figure out what is happening and think of what could be a proper response".
Protests over a film mocking the
prophet Muhammad erupted in Egypt and Libya on Sept. 11, 2012. Violence surrounding the Libyan
unrest led to the deaths of four Americans, including US Ambassador
Christopher Stevens.
Many Muslims consider any depiction
of the prophet to be forbidden, and Islamic teachings call for handling the
Quran with respect. Incidents of both intentional and unintentional
disrespect have occasionally prompted protests and violence around the
world. Here are six examples: The most recent example is a
US-made film called the “Innocence of Muslims,” which reportedly spurred
demonstrations in Egypt and Libya that ended with the deaths of the US Ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens, and
three of his consular staff. In Cairo,
protesters scaled the walls of the US
embassy compound and replaced the US flag with an Islamist one, but
no one was hurt.
The two-hour film paints the
prophet Muhammad as a pedophile and fraud. The details of the amateurish
film's provenance are still being sorted out, but it was reportedly made in America. A
YouTube
trailer of the film was dubbed into Arabic and portions were later picked up by
Egyptian TV stations and discussed in the local media.
President
Mohamed Morsi, who still faces enormous skepticism as Egypt's first Islamist president, squandered an
opportunity to reassure the international community that Egypt is
stable.
Egyptian President Mohamed
Morsi gestures while speaking during a media conference at EU headquarters in Brussels on Thursday,
Sept. 13, 2012. This is Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi's first trip to the
European Union since being elected president. Virginia Mayo/AP
After an attack on
the US consulate in Benghazi
killed the US ambassador to Libya and
three other Americans, Libyan officials, including the interim president,
rapidly and unequivocally condemned the attack, calling it “cowardly” and
apologizing to the US.
And after the US embassy in Yemen was
attacked today, the Yemeni president promptly apologized.
The embassy breach
was an opportunity for Mr. Morsi, who still faces much skepticism abroad as Egypt’s first Islamist president, to reassure
the US that he values America's
friendship. His delayed, ambivalent response will likely rattle US officials
and businessmen looking for signs of stability and undermine whatever trust
he's managed to establish with them.
“I think it’s
shocking,” says Michael Wahid Hanna, a fellow at the New York-based
Century Foundation, of Morsi’s lack of response to the
embassy breach. “I don't think they quite understand the damage they are doing
at the moment.”
Morsi's first response didn't come
until yesterday afternoon. Even then, in statements read by his spokesman and
released on his official Facebook
page, he did not condemn the breach of the embassy. Instead, he denounced the
obscure anti-Islam film, produced by Coptic and evangelical Christians, that
sparked the protests when it was publicized by Egyptian media, called for the
filmmakers to be prosecuted, and said Egypt supports peaceful protests.
He directed the Egyptian embassy in Washington
to take “all possible legal action” against those who produced the film.
Morsi finally responded in person
to the attacks today, in a recorded statement broadcast on state television in
which he said he said Egyptians are free to protest, but not to assault
embassies. At a press conference on a trip to Brussels
this morning, he pledged to protect embassies in Egypt and promised not to permit
such an attack to take place again, while again condemning the film.
Squandering US goodwill?
Just how much damage was done may
have become clearer last night, when President
Obama said in an interview with Telemundo that Egypt,
with which the US has had a
strong partnership for three decades, was not a US ally. “I don't think that we
would consider them an ally. But we don't consider them an enemy,” said Obama.
“…I think that we are going to have to see how they respond to this
incident.”
The cool tone from
the US
could also be seen in President Obama's call to Morsi yesterday. Compared to
his seemingly warm chat with the Libyan leader the same day, his call to Morsi,
described in a White
House release, appeared curt.
Obama
“underscored the importance of Egypt
following through on its commitment to cooperate with the United
States in securing U.S.
diplomatic facilities and personnel,” the release read. According to the White
House, Morsi expressed his condolences about the deaths of four Americans in Libya, and promised to ensure the safety of the American
embassy in Cairo, but did not apologize for allowing it to be breached.
The overrunning of the US embassy came at a particularly awkward time
for Morsi – at the tail end of a trip to Egypt by a large delegation of
American businessmen. The government hoped to portray Egypt as stable
enough for desperately-needed investment.
After positive meetings with the
American businessmen, “all of that goodwill and confidence in their ability to
be good stewards of the Egyptian state is going to be squandered,” says Hanna.
“And I think it reflects a real ineptitude and a lack of fundamental
understanding of being national leaders on the international stage.”
To be sure, the Cairo
embassy protest, which was nonviolent, was vastly different than the deadly
attack on the consulate in Libya.
Yet the sight of protesters raising a flag that has been used by Al Qaeda
in the embassy compound, and of “Bin
Laden” spray-painted on the embassy gate – after Egyptian police failed to
keep protesters from overrunning the compound – is sure to stoke American
anger.
Balancing interests
Like Morsi's statements, the
responses by the Muslim
Brotherhood and its political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party, appeared
aimed at a domestic audience rather than an international one. The FJP, which
Morsi led until he ran for president and is the most powerful party in Egypt, released
a statement yesterday that said the film crossed the bounds of free speech, and
called for the prosecution of those who insult “heavenly religions.” The Muslim
Brotherhood itself called for peaceful protests against the film
tomorrow.
Morsi’s silence is an indication of
the public anger that this issue incites, as well as the pressure he faces from
more conservative Islamists. Many Muslims consider any portrayal of the prophet
Muhammad to be forbidden, so a film that mocks him and portrays him as an
immoral buffoon is doubly offensive. Many in the region, where the freedom to
insult religious symbols is not often recognized as a part of free expression,
question why the US would allow such a film to be made and do not understand
that such a movie could be made without the endorsement, or at least tacit
approval, of the government.
American Copitics and Evangelical are behind the movie
Nakoula
Basseley Nakoula, a Coptic Christian, says that he helped with logistics for
the film "Innocence of Muslims," which mocked Muslims. He denied
directing the film. But there's evidence to suggest the filmmaker, Sam Bacile
is an alias, which is strikingly similar to Nakoula's middle name.
A protester sprays
graffiti on a wall during a protest march to the U.S. embassy in Sanaa September 13,
2012. Hundreds of Yemeni demonstrators stormed the U.S. embassy in Sanaa on Thursday
in protest against a film they consider blasphemous to Islam. The graffiti
reads, "Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah!" - REUTERS/Mohamed
al-Sayaghi
Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, 55, told The
Associated Press in an interview outside Los
Angeles that he helped with logistics for the filming of "Innocence
of Muslims," which mocked Muslims and the prophet Muhammad and may
have caused inflamed mobs that attacked U.S.
missions in Egypt and Libya. He provided the first details about a shadowy
production group behind the film.
Nakoula denied he directed the film
and said he knew the self-described filmmaker, Sam Bacile.
But the cell phone number that AP contacted Tuesday to reach the filmmaker who
identified himself as Sam Bacile traced to the same address near Los Angeles where AP
found Nakoula. Federal court papers said Nakoula's aliases included Nicola
Bacily, Erwin Salameh and others.
Nakoula told the AP that he was a
Coptic Christian and said the film's director supported the concerns of
Christian Copts about their treatment by Muslims.
Nakoula denied he had posed as
Bacile. During a conversation outside his home, he offered his driver's license
to show his identity but kept his thumb over his middle name, Basseley. Records
checks by the AP subsequently found it and other connections to the Bacile
persona.
The AP located Bacile after
obtaining his cell phone number from Morris Sadek, a conservative Coptic
Christian in the U.S.
who had promoted the anti-Muslim film in recent days on his website. Egypt's
Christian Coptic population has long decried what they describe as a history of
discrimination and occasional violence from the country's Arab majority.
Pastor Terry Jones
of Gainesville,
Fla.,
who burned Qurans on the ninth anniversary of 9/11, said he spoke with the
movie's director on the phone Wednesday and prayed for him. He said he has not
met the filmmaker in person, but the man contacted him a few weeks ago about
promoting the movie.
"I have not met him. Sam
Bacile, that is not his real name," Jones said. "I just talked to him
on the phone. He is definitely in hiding and does not reveal his identity. He
was quite honestly fairly shook up concerning the events and what is happening.
A lot of people are not supporting him."
The film was implicated in protests
that resulted in the burning of the U.S.
consulate Tuesday in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi.
Libyan officials said Wednesday
that Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other embassy employees
were killed during the mob violence, but U.S. officials now say they are
investigating whether the assault was a planned terrorist strike linked to
Tuesday's 11-year anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks.
The YouTube
account, "Sam Bacile," which was used to publish excerpts of the
provocative movie in July, was used to post comments online as recently as
Tuesday, including this defense of the film written in Arabic: "It is a
100 percent American movie, you cows."
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer
Leigh Williams said Nakoula set up fraudulent bank accounts using stolen
identities and Social Security numbers, then checks from those accounts
would be deposited into other bogus accounts from which Nakoula would withdraw
money at ATM machines.
It was "basically a
check-kiting scheme," the prosecutor told the AP. "You try to get the
money out of the bank before the bank realizes they are drawn from a fraudulent
account. There basically is no money."
The actors in the film issued a
joint statement Wednesday saying they were misled about the project and said
some of their dialogue was crudely dubbed during post-production.
In the English language version of
the trailer, direct references to Muhammad appear to be the result of
post-production changes to the movie. Either actors aren't seen when the name
"Muhammad" is spoken in the overdubbed sound, or they appear to be
mouthing something else as the name of the prophet is spoken.
"The entire cast and crew are
extremely upset and feel taken advantage of by the producer," said the
statement, obtained by the Los
Angeles Times. "We are 100 percent not behind this film and were grossly
misled about its intent and purpose. We are shocked by the drastic rewrites of
the script and lies that were told to all involved. We are deeply saddened by
the tragedies that have occurred."
The person who identified himself
as Bacile and described himself as the film's writer and director told the AP
on Tuesday that he had gone into hiding. But doubts rose about the man's
identity amid a flurry of false claims about his background and role in the
purported film.
Bacile told the AP he was an
Israeli-born, 56-year-old, Jewish writer and director. But a Christian activist
involved in the film project, Steve
Klein, told AP on Wednesday that Bacile was a pseudonym and that he was Christian.
Klein had told the AP on Tuesday
that the filmmaker was an Israeli Jew who was concerned for family members who
live in Egypt.
Officials in Israel
said there was no record of Bacile as an Israeli citizen.
When the AP initially left a
message for Bacile, Klein contacted the AP from another number to confirm the
interview request was legitimate then Bacile called back from his own cell
phone.
Klein said he didn't know the real
name of the man he called "Sam," who came to him for advice on First
Amendment issues.
"Most of them won't tell me
their real names because they're terrified," Klein said. "He was
really scared and now he's so nervous. He's turned off his phone."
The Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups,
said Klein is a former Marine and longtime religious-right activist who has
helped train paramilitary militias at a California
church. It described Klein as founder of Courageous Christians United, which
conducts protests outside abortion clinics, Mormon temples and mosques.
It quoted Klein as saying he
believes that California
is riddled with Muslim Brotherhood sleeper cells "who are awaiting the
trigger date and will begin randomly killing as many of us as they can."
In his brief interview with the AP,
Bacile defiantly called Islam a cancer and said he intended the film to be a
provocative political statement condemning the religion.
But several key facts Bacile
provided proved false or questionable. Bacile told AP he was 56 but identified
himself on his YouTube profile as 74. Bacile said he is a real estate
developer, but Bacile does not appear in searches of California state licenses, including the
Department of Real Estate.
Hollywood
and California film industry groups and permit
agencies said they had no records of the project under the name "Innocence
of Muslims," but a Los Angeles film permit
agency later found a record of a movie filmed in Los Angeles last year under the working title
"Desert Warriors."
A man who answered a phone listed
for the Vine Theater, a faded Hollywood movie house, confirmed that the film
had run for a least a day, and possibly longer, several months ago, arranged by
a customer known as "Sam."
Google
Inc., which owns YouTube, pulled down the video Wednesday in Egypt, citing a
legal complaint. It was still accessible in the U.S. and other countries.
Klein told the AP that he vowed to
help make the movie but warned the filmmaker that "you're going to be the
next Theo
van Gogh." Van Gogh was a Dutch filmmaker killed by a Muslim extremist
in 2004 after making a film that was perceived as insulting to Islam.
"We went into this knowing
this was probably going to happen," Klein said.
An Egypt mob and a Libya attack are thought to have
been sparked by a virulent anti-Islam YouTube video. But who was behind that
amateurish video remains a mystery.
An Afghan man browses
the YouTube website at a public internet cafe in Kabul, Afghanistan,
Wednesday. Afghanistan banned
the YouTube website on Wednesday to stop Afghans watching a US-made film
insulting the Prophet Mohammad that sparked protests in North Africa and the
killing of the US ambassador
to Libya. Mohammad
Ismail/REUTERS
As calls continue
across the Mideast for protests related to the
anti-Muslim film, “Innocence
of Muslims,” the mystery over who is actually behind the project deepens.
A 14-minute trailer uploaded to YouTube
in July, allegedly from a two-hour movie, reportedly sparked Tuesday’s
violence against the US embassy in Cairo
and a consulate in Benghazi, Libya, where four employees, including the US ambassador,
were killed.
The whole business initially was
attributed to a man identified as Sam Bacile,
said to be a 50-ish American-Israeli citizen. A man with a heavy accent
and “a California
phone number,” spoke to several reporters on Tuesday, including those with
the Times of Israel,
the Associated Press, and The Wall Street Journal. In the Times of Israel report, a
spokesman for the Israeli government denied any citizenship records for a Sam
Bacile.
The YouTube profile behind the clip
sets Mr. Bacile’s age at 75, and there is no additional information other than
two video clips.
On Wednesday, the
Atlantic magazine’s Jeffrey
Goldberg spoke to Steve Klein, a self-described “consultant” on the film, who
said bluntly that he did not know the identity of Sam Bacile or if there
actually was a Sam Bacile.
Mr. Klein told the Atlantic that at least 15 people were behind the film and
added, “Nobody is anything but an active American citizen. They're from Syria, Turkey, Pakistan,
they're some that are from Egypt. Some are Copts but the vast majority are
Evangelical."
In several interviews, the man
calling himself Sam Bacile also indicated that the film cost $5 million to
produce and noted that the money was collected from some 100 donors. However,
in a blog posting Wednesday, BuzzFeed noted that the production values of the
14-minute clip were so amateurish as to make the claim of a multimillion dollar
budget, “risible.” BuzzFeed goes on to suggest that there might not even be a
full movie behind the clip.
“Nearly all of the names in the movie's
trailer make up a compilation of the most clumsily-overdubbed moments from what
is in reality an incoherent, haphazardly-edited set of scenes,” it says. “Among
the overdubbed words is ‘Mohammed,’ suggesting that the footage was taken from
a film about something else entirely. The footage also suggests multiple video
sources – there are obvious and jarring discrepancies among actors and
locations.”
Some analysts are suggesting the
violence stemming from the video clip was far from spontaneous.
“This has all the earmarks of being
heavily orchestrated,” says Nasser Weddady, civil rights outreach director
for the American Islamic Congress.
“There are extremist groups, funded
by among others, the Saudis, who deliberately set out to inflame these kinds of
extremist sentiments,” he says. He points to the fact that the trailer sat
unnoticed on YouTube for nearly two months, until the eleventh anniversary of
the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United
States.
“Then it hit this very
sophisticated network of media channels that spew this kind of hate,” he says,
adding, “This did not just happen.”
Observers need to take a step back,
says Kecia Ali, associate professor of religion at Boston
University.
For over a millennium, Western
critics have demonized Muhammad as a sensualist, governed by his physical
appetites, and as violent, callous, and bloodthirsty – characterizations
extended to Islam as a religion, she points out.
“These portrayals, which were aimed
at Christian audiences, have coexisted for centuries with more positive Western
appraisals treating Muhammad as a visionary leader and moral teacher,” she
says.
However, when an event such as this
video clip surfaces, she says, “when virulently negative images like those from
this film arise, aimed at antagonizing Muslims directly, it is important to ask
who is choosing these images for what purpose?”
There is no
online profile for 'Sam Bacile,' who has told reporters he's an Israeli who
wrote and produced the movie that sparked protests in Libya and Egypt. But there is information
about one of his collaborators, Steve Klein, who has ties to evangelical
militia groups.
And what led to the mobilization of
crowds against the US embassy in Cairo and the US consulate in Benghazi
was the decision of an Islamist TV station to draw
attention to a hate-filled anti-Islamic film, with it's own spin that it was a
"US" production, implying the US government had something to do with
it.
Without that, the year-old movie,
would have remained in obscurity.
But the existence of the film is
the precipitating event. A 14-minute clip from the film online, which presents
the prophet Muhammad as a lascivious simpleton who condoned child-rape, will
never go down as later-day "Birth
of a Nation" when it comes to propaganda films. The shooting, acting,
and dialogue literally drew chuckles from me and could be used to teach a film
class what not to do. Many of its claims and assertions about the founding of
Islam and the contents of the Koran are manifestly false.
Who made it? The
Associated Press spoke to a man who identified himself as "Sam
Bacile," who told their reporter that he's Jewish, Israeli, and real
estate developer residing in California.
The man claimed he'd raised $5 million from "100 Jewish donors" to
make the film, that it was filmed in the summer of last year, and that it's
been shown once in a mostly-empty theater in Hollywood.
Neither I nor anyone else can find
any records of a "Sam Bacile" in California, and it looks highly likely that
it's a pseudonym. Israeli officials say they have no records of a citizen of
that name. (I wrote a piece earlier today in which I credulously accepted the
identity as provided by the AP, and for that I apologize.) I can't see how
someone prominent enough in the Jewish community to raise $5 million from
exclusively Jewish donors could have no online footprint at all. I very much
doubt there is such a person.
Some details of one of the people
behind the film can be confirmed. The AP also spoke to a man named Steve
Klein, who told them he'd acted as a consultant for the film. A little
online sleuthing turned up a "Steven A. Klein," who's involved with a
group called "Concerned Citizens for the First Amendment," which
appears mostly focused on criticizing Islam, which the group says is a
fundamental threat to the US Constitution and way of life.
For instance, in July 2011, Mr.
Klein was the only signatory on a letter from the group that said it would hold
a "First Amendment educational outreach" in front of the Los
Angeles County Administration Building. The letter is largely focused on opposition
to Islamic law and its threat to the US, and also argues that the First
Amendment should allow regulation of religion when it comes to Islam.
The letter describes both Muhammad
and Ayatollah Khomeini, who led the Islamic revolution in Iran, as
pedophiles.
The letter is hosted at The Way TV
(atvsat.com), a Los Angeles-based satellite television channel devoted to
Christian evangelical outreach in the Middle
East. A perusal of its website indicates that most of its founders are
Coptic Christians, and that it takes a particular interest in Egyptian affairs.
Klein works with Joseph Nasralla, a
Coptic-American activist who was involved in the campaign against building the
so-called "Ground Zero Mosque" in Manhattan
and, like Klein, views Islam as a threat to the US. Mr. Nasralla is a founder of
The Way TV, which hosts Klein's television show, according to
anti-Islam activist Robert Spencer.
A call to the station in California was answered by a woman speaking Egyptian
Arabic, who said she's originally from Alexandria.
She said that Steve Klein hosts a program on the station called "Wake up America,"
and that he was indeed the man who worked on the film that sparked yesterday's
events. She promised to pass on my number to him. Mr. Klein has not called
back, though to be fair I left my message just an hour ago. She also said the
station had received an email I'd sent to media4christ@gmail.com, an email
address Klein offered as the best way to reach him in the comments of a story
about an anti-Islam protest his group had organized at Murrieta Valley High School in
California.
"Western civilization is
absolutely superior to Islam, period," he says in his latest broadcast, in
which he says he served as a Marine in Vietnam and
that his son has served as a Marine in Bosnia,
Iraq, and
Afghanistan.
When a caller from Egypt to the broadcast says Islam and Muhammad are the
"anti-Christ" and that all Muslims are "child-molesters,"
Klein agrees, and chuckles at the notion that any Muslims might be "good
people... "
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which tracks what it
terms hate groups, wrote about Klein earlier this year, alleging he's been
involved in training a far-right militia in California.
"In a 22-acre compound at the
southern edge of Sequoia
National Park in California,
a secretive cohort of militant Christian fundamentalists is preparing for war.
One of the men helping train the flock in the art of combat, a former Marine
named Steve Klein, believes that California is riddled with Muslim
Brotherhood sleeper cells 'who are awaiting the trigger date and will begin
randomly killing as many of us as they can,'" the SLPC writes. It continues: "Over the past year,
Johnson and the church militia have developed a relationship with Steve Klein,
a longtime religious-right activist who brags about having led a “hunter
killer” team as a Marine in Vietnam.
Klein ... is allied with Christian activist groups across California."
The SLPC also writes that Klein
"has been active in extremist movements for decades," that he founded
a group in 1977 that "conducts 'respectful confrontations' outside of
abortion clinics, Mormon temples and mosques" and that he has ties to the
Minutemen militia movement.
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