Innocence of Muslims: Benghazi, Garcia v. Google, and the Filmmaker

Innocence of Muslims was a crude, low-budget anti-Islamic film produced in 2011 and uploaded to YouTube in 2012 that mocked the Prophet Muhammad, set off violent protests across much of the Muslim world, and generated a long political fight in the United States along with a landmark court ruling on copyright and free speech. The 14-minute trailer went viral in September 2012 after being dubbed into Arabic, and the unrest that followed left dozens of people dead, including the U.S. Ambassador to Libya.

Who Made the Film

The man behind the project was Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a 55-year-old Egyptian-American Coptic Christian living in Southern California who initially used the pseudonym “Sam Bacile.” He told reporters he was an Israeli-American real estate developer and that the film had been funded by “100 Jewish donors.” Both claims were fabrications.¹²³

The film was shot over roughly two weeks at a studio in Duarte, California, where a small Christian charity called Media for Christ provided free studio space.⁴ Steve Klein, a Hemet, California-based anti-Islamic activist whom the Southern Poverty Law Center identified as the leader of a designated hate group, consulted on the project. Klein admitted he reviewed and approved the script and told reporters the film was “supposed to be provocative.” After the violence began, he told the Associated Press, “We went into this knowing this was probably going to happen.”⁵

How the Cast Was Deceived

Roughly 60 actors and a crew of about 45 worked on the film, and none were told it had anything to do with Islam. The casting notice, posted on Backstage under the title “Desert Warrior,” described the project as a “historical Arabian Desert adventure film” set 2,000 years ago in Egypt. Actors received only a few pages of dialogue at a time, and the central character was referred to on set as “Master George.”⁶⁷

After filming wrapped, Nakoula added the anti-Islamic content through crude audio dubbing. Lines the actors had spoken about “George” were overdubbed with references to Muhammad, and new inflammatory dialogue was inserted that did not match the performers’ lip movements.¹ The finished product depicted Muhammad as, among other things, a fraud, a womanizer, and a child molester.⁸

The cast and crew issued a joint statement to CNN: “The entire cast and crew are extremely upset and feel taken advantage of by the producer. We are 100% not behind this film and were grossly misled about its intent and purpose.”⁶ Actress Cindy Lee Garcia, paid $500 for a five-second cameo, became the most visible deceived performer. In the trailer her lines were overdubbed to make her appear to ask whether Muhammad was a “child molester.”⁹ Garcia said she received death threats, lost her only source of income, and could not visit her grandchildren because her family feared retaliation.¹⁰

The Protests and the Deaths

The trailer sat on YouTube for months with little attention. In early September 2012 it was dubbed into Egyptian Arabic and began spreading on social media. Florida pastor Terry Jones, who had previously sparked deadly riots by staging a Quran burning in 2011, promoted the film alongside an “International Judge Muhammad Day” event on September 11. Morris Sadek, an Egyptian Coptic Christian activist in Washington, D.C., helped distribute the video to journalists.⁸¹¹

Protests erupted on September 11, 2012, and continued for more than a week.

In Cairo, roughly 3,000 demonstrators stormed the walls of the U.S. Embassy, tore down the American flag, and raised a black Islamist banner. Over the following days, more than 200 people were injured in clashes near the embassy.¹²¹³
In Benghazi, Libya, armed militants attacked the U.S. consulate, killing Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. The attack was initially attributed to spontaneous anger over the film but was later assessed by investigators as a planned assault that used the film-related unrest as cover.¹⁴
In Yemen, crowds stormed the U.S. Embassy compound in Sanaa and four people were killed in clashes with security forces.¹²
In Pakistan, demonstrations on September 21 killed at least 17 people and injured nearly 200 in a single day.¹²
Additional violent protests struck Sudan, Tunisia, Lebanon, and Afghanistan, where two U.S. Marines were killed in an attack on Camp Bastion.¹²

Smaller protests also occurred in Iran, Iraq, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Morocco, and Germany.¹⁵

Benghazi and the Political Fallout

The attack on the Benghazi consulate became one of the most politically charged episodes of the Obama era, and the film sat at the center of it. In the days immediately after the attack, administration officials publicly linked the Benghazi violence to anger over the video. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on the night of September 11 that “some have sought to justify this vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet.” Three days later, speaking to the families of the fallen at Andrews Air Force Base, she referred to “an awful internet video that we had nothing to do with.”¹⁶

Her private communications told a different story. The night of the attack, Clinton emailed her daughter Chelsea that two officers had been killed “by an al Qaeda-like group.” The next day, she told the Egyptian prime minister, “We know the attack in Libya had nothing to do with the film. It was a planned attack — not a protest.”¹⁶ The gap between the public and private accounts fueled years of congressional investigations and became a focal point in the 2016 presidential campaign. Testifying before the House Select Committee on Benghazi in October 2015, Clinton said, “I still believe to this day that the video played a role,” describing it as one factor in a “very tense week.”¹⁷

The Free Speech Response and YouTube’s Blocks

The Obama administration condemned the film while defending the right to produce it. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney called the video “offensive and reprehensible and disgusting” but added, “We cannot and will not squelch freedom of expression in this country.”¹⁸ The administration asked YouTube to review the trailer against its terms of service but did not request removal.¹⁹ YouTube concluded the video did not violate its guidelines. At the United Nations General Assembly, President Obama said the answer to offensive speech is “more speech” and that “the notion that we can control the flow of information is obsolete.” General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called Pastor Terry Jones to ask him to withdraw his support for the film; Jones refused.²⁰

The ACLU backed the refusal to censor the video, arguing that the First Amendment protects offensive speech and that the film did not meet the legal standard for incitement, which requires that the speaker intend to cause imminent violence and that violence be the likely and immediate result. The organization did criticize the White House for even asking Google to review the video, calling it a troubling form of government pressure on a private platform.²¹

Google took the unusual step of blocking access to the trailer in specific countries. By mid-September 2012, the video was blocked in Egypt, Libya, Saudi Arabia, India, and Indonesia.²² The company said the clip remained “clearly within our guidelines” and stayed up elsewhere, but cited the “very difficult situation” in the blocked countries.²³ Afghanistan went further and ordered an indefinite ban on all of YouTube to prevent access to the clip.¹⁵ The Electronic Frontier Foundation called such country-level blocks “extremely rare,” and Columbia Law professor Tim Wu noted that Google held more power over this piece of content than either the U.S. or Egyptian governments.²⁴

Garcia v. Google and the Copyright Fight

Cindy Lee Garcia’s effort to force the film off YouTube produced one of the more unusual copyright cases in recent memory. After a Los Angeles Superior Court judge rejected a temporary restraining order in September 2012, she filed a federal suit in the Central District of California arguing she held a copyright interest in her five-second performance. The district court denied her motion for a preliminary injunction, finding her copyright claim unlikely to succeed.²⁵

In February 2014, a divided three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit reversed. Then-Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, writing for the majority, held that Garcia had a copyrightable interest in her performance and ordered Google to take down the film and prevent future uploads. The panel also imposed a gag order temporarily preventing Google from discussing the ruling.²⁵

The full Ninth Circuit then reheard the case en banc. On May 18, 2015, an eleven-judge panel reversed the takedown order. Judge M. Margaret McKeown, writing for the majority, called Garcia’s copyright claim “dubious” and “unprecedented,” noting that the U.S. Copyright Office had already rejected her attempt to register a copyright in her individual performance. A motion picture, the court held, is a “single integrated work,” and Garcia had not fixed her performance in a tangible medium under the Copyright Act. The court described the earlier takedown as “a classic prior restraint of speech” that “censored and suppressed a politically significant film,” writing that “a weak copyright claim cannot justify censorship in the guise of authorship.”²⁶²⁷ Judge Kozinski dissented, arguing the majority “makes a total mess of copyright law” and ignored the direct threat to Garcia’s life.⁹

What Happened to the Filmmaker

Nakoula was not charged with any crime related to the film’s content. Federal authorities arrested him on September 28, 2012, for violating the terms of supervised release from his 2010 bank fraud case. Those conditions barred him from using computers or the internet without his probation officer’s written approval and from using aliases. Prosecutors said he violated both by producing and uploading the video as “Sam Bacile” and by using aliases on at least three occasions.²⁸³

A federal judge denied him bail, citing a “likely pattern of deception both to his probation officers and the court.”³ In November 2012, U.S. District Judge Christina Snyder sentenced Nakoula to 12 months in federal prison followed by four years of supervised release after he admitted to four probation violations.²⁹ His legal team said the sentence effectively punished him for the film’s content; the government denied that.³⁰ He was transferred to a halfway house in San Pedro, California, in May 2013 and released from federal custody on September 26, 2013.³¹

1
The Guardian. Innocence of Muslims: A Dark Demonstration of the Power of Film
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ABC News. Innocence of Muslims Filmmaker Has No Regrets
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CNN. California Anti-Islam Filmmaker
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Los Angeles Times. Nonprofit’s Role in Anti-Islam Film
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SPLC. Meet Steve Klein, Hate Group Leader Who Consulted on Innocence of Muslims
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Smithsonian Magazine. What We Do and Don’t Know About the Movie Muslim Innocence
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BuzzFeed News. Muhammad Movie Crew Member Sheds Light on Film’s Production
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New York Times. Anger Over Film Fuels Anti-American Attacks in Libya and Egypt
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BBC News. Anti-Islam Film Should Not Be Banned From YouTube
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The Hollywood Reporter. Innocence of Muslims: Cindy Lee Garcia Interview
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Sojourners. Free Speech Fundamentalism
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Al Jazeera. Timeline: Protests Over Anti-Islam Video
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The Guardian. Egypt Protest at US Embassy in Cairo
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The Guardian. Movie Assault on US Consulate in Libya
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Al Jazeera. Angry Protests Spread Over Anti-Islam Video
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FactCheck.org. The Benghazi Timeline, Clinton Edition
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The Hill. Clinton: I Still Believe Video Helped Spark Benghazi
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Politico. White House Asked YouTube to Review Anti-Muslim Film
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ABC News. White House Asks YouTube to Review Anti-Muslim Movie
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Wired. Obama, Free Speech, and YouTube
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ACLU. ACLU Backs Strong Speech Stance After Muslims Video Backlash
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BBC News. Google Blocks Anti-Islam Film in Egypt and Libya
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Electronic Frontier Foundation. YouTube Blocks Access to Controversial Video in Egypt and Libya
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Washington Post. Google’s Restricting of Anti-Muslim Video Shows Role of Web Firms as Free Speech Arbiters
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Electronic Frontier Foundation. Garcia v. Google, Inc.
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NPR. Google Wins Copyright and Speech Case Over Innocence of Muslims Video
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Reuters. YouTube May Show Innocence of Muslims Film, US Court
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NPR. Innocence of Muslims Filmmaker Arrested
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BBC News. Anti-Islam Filmmaker Nakoula Basseley Nakoula Jailed
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DW. US Appeals Court Allows YouTube to Show Innocence of Muslims
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NPR. Creator of Anti-Muslim Film Being Released From Custody