The Benghazi attack resulting in the death of a U.S. Ambassador may be the stuff of old news, but the controversial anti-Islam film initially thought to have spurred the attack, “Innocence of Muslims,” has resurfaced. An Egyptian court ordered the suspension of online video service YouTube for a month on Saturday for broadcasting the amateurish short film, “Innocence of Muslims,” which insults the Prophet Mohammad, Reuters reports.
Egyptian state news agency MENA told reporters that Egypt’s administrative court ordered the ministries of communication and investment to block YouTube, owned by Google, because YouTube carried the film “Innocence of Muslims.”
“Innocence of Muslims,” a 13-minute video, billed as a film trailer and made in the United States, provoked a torrent of anti-American unrest in Egypt, Libya and dozens of other Muslim countries in September.
“Innocence of Muslims” depicts the Prophet as a fool and a sexual deviant. For most Muslims, any portrayal of the Prophet is considered blasphemous.
The Egyptian court said it was ruling on a case brought about the “Innocence of Muslims” several months ago, without going into further detail.
YouTube had “insisted on broadcasting the film insulting Islam and the Prophet, disrespecting the beliefs of millions of Egyptians and disregarding the anger of all Muslims” the court said, according to MENA.
Egypt’s National Telecommunication Regulatory Authority said it would abide by the ruling as soon as it received a copy of the verdict.
No one was immediately available for comment from Google or YouTube.
How or why “Innocence of Muslims” has resurfaced in recent days remains unknown. Its filmmaker, Mark Basseley Youseff, 55, known to be using the alias Sam Bacile when making and promoting “Innocence of Muslims,” and also known as Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, was sentenced to a year in jail for probation violations, chiefly lying to his probation officer, using fake names and otherwise violating the terms of his supervised release from a prior bank and credit-card fraud case.