EGYPT: Riots At US Embassy After Film Depicts Mohammed As Homosexual

Egyptian protesters today overran the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and tore down the American flag after seeing clips from an anti-Islam film produced by Florida-based Pastor Terry Jones. [SEE UPDATE BELOW] The movie apparently depicts Mohammed as a homosexual and child molester.

Nearly 3,000 demonstrators, most of them hardline Islamist supporters of the Salafist movement, gathered at the embassy in protest over a film deemed offensive to the Prophet Mohammed which was produced by expatriate members of Egypt's Christian minority resident in the United States. A dozen men scaled the embassy walls and one of them tore down the US flag, replacing it with a black one inscribed with the Muslim profession of faith: "There is no God but God and Mohammed is the prophet of God." Demonstrators also daubed part of that slogan - "There is no God but God" - on the walls of the embassy compound. A US State Department spokeswoman confirmed the incident.

The Cairo embassy has issued numerous tweets denouncing Jones, but not by name.The Atlantic has some information about the movie.

The movie is called Mohammed Nabi al-Muslimin, or Mohammed, Prophet of the Muslims. If you've never heard of it, that's because most of the few clips circulating online are dubbed in Arabic. The above clip, which is allegedly from the film (update: Kurt Werthmuller, a Coptic specialist at the Hudson Institute, says he's confirmed the clip's authenticity) is one of the only in English. That's also because it's allegedly produced by Florida Pastor Terry Jones (yes, the asshole who burnt the Koran despite Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates' pleas) and two Egyptians living in the U.S., according to Egyptian press accounts. The Egyptians are allegedly Coptic, the Christian minority that makes up about a tenth of Egypt. [snip] Other scenes in the above clip seem to portray Muslim Egyptian characters, who for some reason all have strong New York accents, as immoral and violent, particularly toward the Christians whom they pursue with near-genocidal fervor. A number of Islam's founding figures, including the prophet, are accused of homosexuality and child molestation.

Terry Jones has just posted a new clip on YouTube.

UPDATE: The violence has now spread the American consulate in Libya.

An armed mob has attacked the US consulate in the Libyan city of Benghazi and set fire to the building, witnesses reported, in what they said was a protest at a film they said offended Islam. A little earlier, Libya's deputy interior minister Wanis al-Shari, told AFP the crowd had attacked the building and that information was confirmed by the US embassy in the capital Tripoli. "There are fierce clashes between the Libyan army and an armed militia outside the U.S. consulate," Abdel-Monen Al-Hurr, spokesman for Libya's Supreme Security Committee, said to Reuters, adding that roads had been closed off and security forces were surrounding the building. A U.S. embassy source said there had been "an attack" on the diplomatic office in Benghazi, but gave no further details.

RELATED: In April 2011 eleven people were killed in Afghanistan, including some United Nations employees, after riots erupted when Jones burned the Koran outside his Florida church.

UPDATE II: Mitt Romney has issued a statement denouncing the president.

“I'm outraged by the attacks on American diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt and by the death of an American consulate worker in Benghazi," the statement read. "It's disgraceful that the Obama Administration's first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.” The assertion that the administration sympathized with attackers was derived from a statement by the U.S. Embassy in Cairo — before the compound was breached — criticizing an anti-Muslim film that "hurt the religious feelings" of others. Even after coming under attack, the Embassy spent much of the day defending and reasserting the statement on Twitter. Whether Obama deserved the blame for the Embassy's messaging is a point of debate; what was not was the news value of Romney's harsher-than-expected statement.

UPDATE III: Contrary to the reports first linked above, US-based Pastor Terry Jones did NOT produce the film, he has merely been promoting it.