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I have seen some bad movies, but none so horrid that I wanted to kill the director. Not even Woody Allen. It may have caught your attention that gaggles of enraged Muslims executed a U.S. ambassador plus a few other folks, and continue rioting around the world. Their current fit of pique was provoked by a laughably low-budget film that critiques Islam and takes a swipe or three at Muhammad (no, not the fellow who drives the taxi that takes me to the airport … the other and slightly more famous Muhammad). No person of sound mental condition could take...

Fresh protests are taking place around the Muslim world over an amateur anti-Islam video produced in the US. At least one protester was killed in violent protests in Pakistan and thousands attended an angry rally in the Philippines city of Marawi. Weapons were fired and police cars torched in the Afghan capital, Kabul. The leader of Lebanon's Hezbollah has said the US faces "very dangerous" repercussions if it allows the full video to be released. In a rare public appearance, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah told a rally in the capital Beirut that the world did not understand the "breadth of the...

In the 1980s, First Lady Nancy Reagan famously urged kids to “just say no” to drugs. Although I’m no fan of the War on Drugs, she was certainly correct to point out that saying “no” is a good way of avoiding the dangers of drug use. Co-blogger Eugene Volokh makes a similar argument with respect to violence intended to pressure Western nations into suppressing “blasphemous” speech. Giving in to the terrorists incentivizes further terrorism, while refusing to do so reduces the risk of future violence. This principle applies to terrorism more broadly: An excellent way to reduce the risk of...

In recent days, I’ve heard various people calling for punishing the maker of Innocence of Muslims, and more broadly for suppressing such speech. During the Terry Jones planned Koran-burning controversy, I heard similar calls. Such expression leads to the deaths of people, including Americans. It worsens our relations with important foreign countries. It’s intended to stir up trouble. And it’s hardly high art, or thoughtful political arguments. It’s not like it’s Satanic Verses, or even South Park or Life of Brian. Why not shut it down, and punish those who engage in it (of course, while keeping Satanic Verses and...

Federal authorities have identified a Coptic Christian in southern California who is on probation after his conviction for financial crimes as the key figure behind the anti-Muslim film that ignited mob violence against U.S. embassies across the Mideast, a U.S. law enforcement official told The Associated Press on Thursday. The official said authorities had concluded that Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, 55, was behind “Innocence of Muslims,” a film that denigrated Islam and the prophet Muhammad and sparked protests earlier this week in Egypt, Libya and most recently in Yemen. It was not immediately clear whether Nakoula was the target of a...

Please forgive me if all of this sounds ridiculous... But I have spent a little time viewing clips from this "Innocence of Muslims" film. It is so astonishingly poorly acted and produced that I cannot even compare it to the worst student movies I have ever seen.... And I have produced, directed, and SEEN a lot of junk in formats from Super8 to 35 and up. The piece is almost unbelievably bad. Unbelievably - as in - nothing I have ever seen from the West is this bad, this poorly edited, acted, written, lit, greenscreened. The piece is a parody...

A high-ranking Israeli official in Los Angeles on Wednesday said that after numerous inquiries, it appeared no one in the Hollywood film industry or in the local Israeli community knew of a Sam Bacile, the supposed director-writer of the incendiary film “Innocence of Muslims.” The official expressed some doubt that a person by that name actually existed.

Ultraconservative Muslims are outraged by the Israeli-made movie 'Innocence of Muslims', which mocked the prophet Muhammad. US missions in Egypt and Libya were attacked, and the American ambassador to Libya and 3 others were killed by an armed mob. The films’ writer and director, Sam Bacile is now in hiding but told the Associated Press by phone that "Islam is a cancer, period." A California real estate developer who identifies himself as an Israeli Jew, Bacile added that his film was meant as a provocative political statement “condemning Islam”. The two-hour movie, financed by over 100 Jewish donors, basically claims...