In Defense of Innocence

By Zaynab Harith

“Disgusting and Reprehensible” said Hillary Clinton when referring to the YouTube clip “Innocence of Muslims” “We absolutely reject its content and message” she added. “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam” Obama told the United Nations. “Innocence of Muslims is a stupid hate film” wrote numerous bloggers. Nakoula the author of the movie now sits in an American jail. In countries all over the Muslim world there have been riots protesting Nakoula’s movie. Pakistani Government minister Ghulam Ahmad Bilour put a $100,000 bounty on Nakoula’s head. An Egyptian Muslim cleric has called on American Muslim youth to kill Nakoula, and everyone involved in the video, including actors, actresses and anyone who has promoted Innocence of Muslims. Americans Muslims have threatened to chop off Nakoula’s head. Richard Gere told journalists he was open to shooting any movie that helped present Muslims in a more positive light.

Did Nakoula’s movie slander the prophet of Islam or did he tell the truth about Muhammad? This movie is difficult to get hold of but if we don’t live in countries where the trailer has been banned such as India and Russia, we can examine the trailer in order to answer this question.

The trailer starts with a constable telling a doctor “our prophet had 61 wives and 11 at the same time.” According to Islamic texts not only did Muhammad have many wives and concubines but in some cases he or his followers had killed their husbands.

The trailer continues with the doctor telling his daughter to close the clinic because of an angry mob on the street.

Muslim mobs have attacked Christians throughout the Middle East but have they attacked hospitals? A good place to find the answer is the religion of peace web site. A recent example of an attack on a hospital took place in Iraq on January 15, 2011. Muslim attacks on hospitals are not restricted to the Middle East.

Raphael Israeli wrote:

"In 2004, there were 145 attacks in hospitals in France, rising to more than 200 in 2006 in which medical staff had been attacked by Muslims." A story in Le Figaro this year maintains that French hospital personnel are becoming "more and more victims of violence," citing a report from the health ministry agency responsible for keeping track of violence in healthcare facilities.

In the movie trailer the police arrive at the medical clinic and the master sergeant says “Freeze, do not take any action until everything is over.”

Lack of Muslim police intervention when Christians are attacked has been going on for years. In one incident on 31 May 2008, a Muslim mob attacked the Coptic Monastery of Saint Fana and kidnapped and tortured monks. The police arrived several hours after being informed of the attack even though they were located only 6 km away.

In the trailer the doctor tells his daughter “The Islamic Egyptian Police arrested 1,400 Christians, tortured them and forced them to confess to killings”.

Videos of Egyptian police attacking and arresting Christians have been posted on the internet. The Egyptian military attacks Copts as well. When after a series of brutal attacks against Christians, Christian activists marched to the state-run TV station in Cairo, chanting and demanding reforms, military “Security” forces mowed down hundreds of Christian protesters with guns and tanks, killing dozens and injuring hundreds more.

Hundreds of thousands of Copts have already been forced to flee their homes. Nigerian lawyer and activist Emmanuel Ogebe, after describing the carnage of thousands of Christians at the hands of Muslim militants at Coptic Solidarity’s third annual conference in Washington D.C on July 2012, lamented that Obama’s response was to pressure the Nigerian president to make more concessions, including the creation of more mosques (the very places that “radicalize” Muslims against “infidel” Christians). According to the Obama administration the slaughter of Christians by Muslims is not a religious conflict. In fact, instead of protecting the Christians, the Obama administration has launched a 600 million dollar initiative to find the true causes of the slaughter of Christians. Was it reprehensible of Nakoula to point out the plight of the Copts in his movie or is spending 600 million American tax payer dollars to find the “true” causes while Christians are being murdered and the American economy is going bankrupt, heartless, disgusting and reprehensible? Is it reprehensible to speak the truth about Islam or to suppress the truth the way the Obama administration has done by purging texts that Muslims might find offensive from FBI and government training manuals? Was it reprehensible for Lieutenant Colonel Dooley to teach a course on Islamic radicalism or for President Barack Obama's Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey to fire him for doing so. Why is a man who warns about Islam fired while a Muslim psychiatrist Nidal Hasan, who gave speeches to his fellow psychiatrists how non-believers will go to hell, was not fired until he opened fire on his fellow soldiers.

In the trailer the Doctor says to his daughter Marina: “Man plus X equals Islamic Terrorist. Islamic Terrorist minus X equals man.” His daughter than asks him “But what is X?”

Both the Bush and the Obama administrations have told us that Islam is a religion of peace and that the only reason there are Islamic terrorists is because Islam has been hijacked by a few extremists. The doctor in the movie is telling us that, this is not the case and that Islam changes people into Islamic terrorists. If Islam is a hijacked religion of peace then once the chief hijacker, Osama was killed one would expect the Muslim masses would revert to their peaceful selves. If Islam creates the Osama’s of the world than we would expect what we have recently seen, riots in which thousands of Muslims in Egypt , Tunisia , Qatar and other countries chanted “We are all Osama”.

In the next scene in the trailer the topic shifts to the life of Muhammad. Two men discuss hiding the disgrace that Muhammad was born of an unknown father.

This scene is based on the fact that Muslims believe that Abdallah was Muhammad’s father but Muhammad was the wrong age to have been Abdallah’s son since Muhammad was 2 and Abdallah had died six years previously.

In a later scene in the movie Muhammad’s wife Khadijah orders him to sit on her lap and in different positions until he no longer sees the devil.

This scene makes fun of a story in Ibn Ishaq’s book, The Life of Muhammad in which Kadijah did a test to see if the spirit who came to Muhammad was an angel or the devil. According to Ibn Ishaq the author of Sirat Rasul Allah the biography of Muhammad, she told Muhammad to sit on her lap and then disclosed her form and asked if Muhammad could still see the spirit. When he said no she said that the spirit must be an angel and not the devil.

In the next episode in the movie Khadijah’s cousin says he will help Muhammad. He says “I will make a book for him. He said he would mix verses from the Torah and the New Testament with false verses.” The cousin dies and Muhammad is upset because he’s lost his inspiration.

This scene is dealing with the question of where the Koran came from. Whoever wrote the Koran had some familiarity with Christian and Jewish doctrine. The Biblical scholar Dr. Robert M. Price wrote:

"The Koran was assembled from a variety of prior Hagarene texts … in order to provide the Moses-like Muhammad with a Torah of his own...."

Even Islamic texts even quote al-Nadr a person who did not believe in Islam as saying regarding Muhammad “ He is spouting ancient legends that he has gathered from the mouths of men more learned than he."

The movie suggests that Khadijah‘s cousin Waraqa bin Naufil may have been the learned source of Islamic doctrine. Waraqa had been converted to Christianity in the Pre-Islamic Period and used to write about the Gospel in Arabic. According to Islamic texts when Waraqa died the Divine Inspiration was paused for a while so that Allah's Apostle was very much grieved.

In the next scene Waraqa tells Muhammad to kill the men and capture the women, loot and sell the children in the next raid.

According to the Koran, Muhammad started his military career by launching raids against the Quraysh and looting their caravans. Two months after his first successful raid Muhammad led over 300 men against a large Meccan caravan which was making its way home from Syria.

Muhammad told his followers:

"It is likely that Allah may give it to you as booty." (Ibn Sa'd, Vol. II, 9.)

Notice that he made its God will to attack and steal and kill. Muhammad also permitted his men to take all the infidel women that they could capture, as concubines (Koran 4:3) except the ones he wanted for himself.

In the next scene the master tells a married woman to wait for him in her tent. A girl asks “Isn’t it shameful for a woman to expose herself to a man she does not know?” and the master answers that “Have you not heard what God has said in the Quran. The Master may desire whom he wants and shall be given whom he wants.”

This is consistent with Koran which states (33:50):

O Prophet! surely We have made lawful to you your wives whom you have given their dowries, and those whom your right hand possesses out of those whom Allah has given to you as prisoners of war, and the daughters of your paternal uncles and the daughters of your paternal aunts, and the daughters of your maternal uncles and the daughters of your maternal aunts who fled with you; and a believing woman if she gave herself to the Prophet, if the Prophet desired to marry her-- specially for you, not for the (rest of) believers;

According to the Muslim historian Abu Ja'far Muhammad bin Jarir al-Tabari (839-923), one of Muhammad's many sons, Zayad married a beautiful wife by the name of Zaynab and Muhammad wanted her. One day Muhammad was talking with Aisha (one of his wives) when "a fainting overcame him." Then he smiled and asked, "Who will go to Zaynab to tell her the good news, saying that God has married her to me?" He then recited the revelation Allah had just given him, scolding him for being concerned about what people might think and thus refusing to marry Zaynab. (Qur'an 33:37)

Later in the trailer a shepherd expresses his happiness that his daughter will be marrying 53 year old Mohammad and says “My daughter shall have the stars.”

According to (Sahih Bukhari 5.236) when Muhammad was 51 years old he married a six year old child, a marriage he consummated when she was 9 years old. Muhammad explained that God wanted him to do so:

"...the Prophet said to her (Aisha), 'You have been shown to me twice in my dream. I saw you pictured on a piece of silk and someone said (to me). 'This is your wife.' When I uncovered the picture, I saw that it was yours. I said, 'If this is from Allah, it will be done.'"

Many Muslims are following Muhammad’s example. This movie “Innocence of Muslims” by exposing the source of this practice is defending the innocence of children. Courageous Christians acted to defend the childhood innocence of Muslim girls with signs saying that Mohammad was a pedophile that they displayed near a Muslim festival in Dearborn Michigan. The Christians were attacked by Muslims who hurled rocks at them but instead of arresting the Muslims and protecting the Christians the police arrested the Christians and Obama praised the Dearborn police! If the message that Mohammad was a pedophile does not get out than the current situation in which little girls are being married off to old men will continue in the Arab world and will come to America as well. Islamic child marriages are already being arranged in Europe.

In the trailer an elderly woman says:

My age has exceeded 120 years and in all my young life ‘I haven’t seen such a murderous thug as Muhammad’. He kills men, captures women and children, robs the caravans, and breaches agreements and treaties. He sells the children as slaves after he and his men have used them. And what’s more, he does this all in the name of God. What God is this that is such an oppressor and so unfair to the people?

Perhaps the most well known example of Muhammad engaging in the behavior described by the woman in the movie was his actions toward the Jewish tribe of the Bani Qurayza. He accused the Jewish tribe of the Bani Qurayza of wanting to betray him and received a convenient communication from the angel Gabriel who ordered him to attack them. He ordered his men to put them under siege. After 14 days the Bani Qurayza surrendered. Mohammed killed all their men, and enslaved their women and children [Saheeh Muslim - 1769]. Ibn Ishaq gave the details:

The apostle went out to the market of Medina and dug trenches in it. Then he sent for the men of Qurayzah and struck off their heads as they were brought out to him in batches until 600 to 700 of them were dead.

The Jewish women and children were enslaved and Muhammad took one of them, a fifteen year old girl named Rayhana bint Zayd ibn Amr as a personal slave.

In the movie, the elderly woman who made the above speech is torn apart by camels tied to opposite ends of her body.

This scene is based on the murder of Umm Qirfah a leader of the Fazarah tribe. According to Tabari Vol.8:Page.96:

Allah’s Messenger sent Zayd to Wadi Qura, where he encountered the Banu Fazarah. Some of his companions were killed, and Zayd was carried away wounded. … After he recovered, Muhammad sent him with an army against the Fazarah settlement. He met them in Qura and inflicted casualties on them and took Umm Qirfah prisoner. .. Zyad bin Harithah ordered Qays to kill Umm, and he killed her cruelly. He tied each of her legs with a rope and tied the ropes to two camels, and they split her in two.

In the next scene we hear:

Let us take the other treasure. Cut off his arms and his legs and then his head and do it in front of his beautiful wife Sophia.

Muslim (laughs)

As you command Master.

This is probably based on the story of Safiyya a 17 year old girl of "incomparable beauty" (Ibn Saad, al-Tabaqat, pp. 120-123) whose husband Kinana knew where the treasure of his tribe was hidden. In order to get Kinana to reveal where the treasure was the Muslims lit a fire on his chest but Kinana died refusing to reveal its location. A couple of years earlier Muhammad killed Safiyya’s father himself. Muhammad forced Safiyya to be one of his wives and raped her.

There are modern day Muslims who are every bit as cruel as Muhammad was. Taliban gunmen boarded a school bus and shot fourteen year old Malala Yousafzai a girl who fought for the right of Pakistani girls to have an education. The Taliban vowed that if she recovers, they’ll shoot her again. And they won’t stop until she’s dead. A Taliban spokesman explained:

“She has become a symbol of Western culture, let this be a lesson.”

The lesson that is needed is the lesson in Nakoula’s movie.

The inescapable conclusion from the above analysis of the movie is that although there was some literary license taken, the movie’s description of Mohammad and of a Muslim attack on a Christian medical clinic describe reality.

In light of the violent response to attempts to tell the truth about Muhammad and Christian persecution one has to ask oneself not if such an endeavor is reprehensible but if it is productive. Has it made Muslims question their religion and become more peaceful or more violent? Given the threat we face from a nuclear armed Pakistan, and Iran, is it really a good idea to antagonize the Arab world with a YouTube video? Would it not be best to restrict free speech so that such videos do not surface anymore?

I think the violent protests against the film were instigated by religious leaders who know that their power is threatened by those who promote disbelief in Islam. I think the violence is actually evidence that the film is effective. Islamic violence occurs whether we expose Islam or not. We need to remember that the attacks of 9/11/2001 happened before Nakoula’s video and that the terrorist attack on the American embassy in Benghazi that occurred after Nakoula’s video on 9/11/2012 was carried out on that date to send a message to the United States, not as a spontaneous expression of rage to a video that had been produced months before. In the long term there will be less Islamic violence if we convince Muslims that God does not want them to engage in Jihad against the infidel. If we reward Muslim violence the way Obama did by making speeches that there is no future for those who slander Islam that will encourage more Muslim violence. If we don’t speak out and more importantly continue to send billions of dollars to countries that persecute Christians they will have no incentive to stop persecuting Christians.

One of the ways Muslims persecute Copts in Egypt is by stealing their daughters. There is a tragic movie called The Passion of the Copts in which a woman cries out for her daughter and desperate Egyptian Christians plead for help from God. God is not helping them and neither is America. Obama won’t grant them asylum. Obama even refused to discuss the situation with a Coptic leader. A commenter on the Passion movie posted:

“Our women are to be enslaved in Islam, our men are to be killed and America receives millions of Islamist with open arms and refuses to give us asylum.”

Pamela Geller wrote:

“U.S. policy regarding refugee resettlement would shock most Americans if they only knew. The United Nations picks who gets to come to the U.S. as a refugee. The mandate of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is to determine which of the world's huddled masses comes to the U.S. as humanitarian refugees. And predictably, this U.N. body is favoring Muslims. Christians from Muslim lands are being refused refugee status.”

Tens of thousands of Muslims are immigrating to the United States every month. Another comment warned about the consequences of such immigration:

“The suffering of non-Muslims in Muslim countries is beyond bearing. God help our brother and sister non-Muslims! This and other terrible horrors will take place in our Western countries if Muslim immigration is not stopped… “

We only have to look at what happened and what is happening to countries where there is large scale Muslim immigration and to watch the video of Christians being stoned by Muslims in Dearborn to see the truth in these words. An

During the debate between vice president Biden and Senator Ryan, Biden argued that we don’t need to worry about Iran’s enrichment of uranium yet because “they have to be able to have something to put it in.” (a bomb). We need to remember that Pakistan protected Osama from us and that Pakistan has “something to put it in”. If we don’t make an all out effort to convince Muslims that God has not commanded them to wage holy war against us than if Muslim immigration doesn’t get us, the Muslim bomb will.