Fury over Mohammad video simmers on in Muslim world
A Shi'ite Muslim supporter of the Imamia
Students Organization (ISO) shouts slogans as he scuffles with police while
running towards the U.S embassy with others during an anti-American protest
rally in Islamabad
DUBAI (Reuters) - A wave of
furious anti-Western protests against a film mocking the Prophet Mohammad abated
on Saturday, but U.S. policy in the Muslim world remained
overshadowed by 13 minutes of amateurish video on the Internet.
Washington ordered family members and
non-essential staff to leave the U.S. embassy in Khartoum, which was attacked on
Friday, after Sudan turned down its request to send Marines to bolster
security.
In addition it pulled non-essential
personnel out of its embassy in Tunisian capital Tunis, also attacked on Friday,
and urged American
citizens to leave the city.
Marine platoons have been sent to U.S.
missions in Yemen and Libya since the unrest erupted.
Elsewhere, riot police stormed into Cairo's
Tahrir Square and rounded up hundreds of people after four days of clashes and
demands from protesters for the U.S. ambassador to be expelled.
Saudi Arabia's highest religious authority
denounced the attacks on diplomats and embassies across the Middle East as
un-Islamic.
But the Yemen-based branch of al Qaeda
applauded the killings of U.S. diplomats in Libya and urged Muslims to kill
more, calling the video posted on the Internet another chapter in the "crusader
wars" against Islam.
A California man convicted of bank fraud,
who has denied reports that he was involved in the film's production, was taken
in for questioning by officers investigating possible probation violations
stemming from the making of the film.
Afghanistan's Taliban claimed
responsibility for an attack on a base that killed two American Marines, saying it was a response
to the insults to the founder of Islam.
RELATIVE CALM
Hundreds of Muslims took to the streets of
Australia's largest city, some throwing rocks and bottles in clashes with
police. Some carried placards reading "Behead all those who insult the
Prophet".
About 80 Islamist militants were arrested
in Paris while trying to demonstrate outside the U.S. embassy near the Champs
Elysees, French police sources said.
Saturday was, however, relatively calm
after at least nine deaths in the Muslim world on Friday during protests and
attacks on American and other Western embassies.
President Barack Obama, leading a ceremony
on Friday to honor the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans who
died in an attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi on September 11, vowed to
"stand fast" against the violence.
"The United States will never retreat from
the world," he said. The Pentagon rushed to bolster security at missions
abroad.
The U.S. State Department on Saturday also
urged American citizens to avoid Sudan's restive Darfur, Blue Nile and Southern
Kordofan regions.
Libyan authorities said they had identified
50 people who were involved in the attack in which ambassador Christopher
Stevens died.
Saudi Arabia's Grand Mufti, Sheikh
Abdulaziz bin Abdullah Al al-Sheikh, denounced the attacks while urging
governments and international bodies to criminalize insults against
prophets.
He described the short film as "miserable"
and "criminal", but said attacks on the innocent and on diplomats were "a
distortion of the Islamic religion and are not accepted by God".
FREE SPEECH LAWS
The video, circulating on the Internet
under several titles including "Innocence of Muslims", portrays Mohammad as a
womanizer and a fool.
"We were attacked by Obama, and his
government, and the Coptic Christians living abroad!" shouted one long-bearded
Muslim protester outside the U.S. embassy in Cairo on Friday.
In the Los Angeles suburb of Cerritos,
Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, 55, who has denied involvement in the film in a phone
call to a Coptic Christian bishop, was ushered out of his home and into a
waiting car by sheriff's deputies, his face shielded by a scarf, hat and
sunglasses.
"He will be interviewed by federal
probation officers," a police spokesman said. "He was never put in handcuffs ...
It was all voluntary."
U.S. officials have said authorities are
not investigating the film project itself, and that even if it was inflammatory
or led to violence, simply producing it cannot be considered a crime in the
United States, which has strong free speech laws.
A statement posted on a website used by Al
Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula called on Muslims to "follow the example of Omar
al-Mukhtar's descendants (Libyans), who killed the American ambassador".
"Let the step of kicking out the embassies
be a step towards liberating Muslim countries from the American hegemony," the
group said.
Hundreds of mourners in the Yemeni capital
Sanaa attended the funeral on Saturday of a young protester shot dead when riot
police battled a crowd attacking the U.S. embassy on Thursday.
(Writing by Andrew Roche; Editing by Kevin
Liffey and Pravin Char)
http://news.yahoo.com/anti-american-fury-sweeps-middle-east-over-film-003133374.html
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