Protesters in Cairo on Friday. Photo published on Twitter by @TheMiinz

Tensions remain high in the Muslim world over “Innocence of Muslims”, a video recently published on YouTube. Protests denouncing the video as insulting to Islam, and in particular to its Prophet Muhammad, have taken place in several Muslim countries on Friday and over the weekend. We asked several protesters to tell us what shocked them most about the video.

While many protesters denounce this “movie”, there is no proof that the video, presented as an excerpt, is actually part of any full-length movie. The video posted to YouTube, which is 13 minutes long, depicts the Prophet Mohammad, his wife Khadija, and his companions. The low-quality production seems to have been dubbed in order to make fun of these characters. (The cast of the film confirm that their words were dubbed.) The dialogue also denigrates the Koran and presents Muslims as paedophiles.

Protests against the video began last Wednesday in Cairo and in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi. In Benghazi , the US ambassador to Libya lost his life during an attack on the consulate. Protests then spread like wildfire. Western embassies were attacked in Sudan and in Tunisia. Four protesters were killed in Yemen, four in Tunisia, three in Sudan and one in Tripoli, Lebanon.

Protests are set to continue in Lebanon – on Sunday evening, the head of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, denounced the video and called on the group’s supporters to demonstrate on Monday afternoon.



