His inflammatory chat show on satellite television has long prided itself on baiting liberals, Christians and Jews, but last week saw Sheikh Khalid Abdullah stage the broadcasting controversy of a lifetime.
The rabble-rousing Egyptian tele-Islamist knew he had found a ratings-grabber when he found an obscure, badly-made film on the internet called the Innocence of Muslims.
It had actually been online since July, but nobody had paid attention to its crude libels against the Prophet Mohammed until Mr Abdullah's show broadcast clips from it last weekend, calling for the film-makers to be executed.
Within hours the hardline Salafi Islamists who watch his programme, and who have been growing in strength since last year's revolution, were demonstrating in Cairo's Tahrir Square and outside the US embassy, which they stormed on Tuesday, burning the US flag.
Thus came the spark to a week of violent protests against the film, leading to the killing of the US ambassador to Libya on Tuesday evening and assaults on Western embassies across the Middle East, leaving at least nine dead and hundreds injured.
Also taking a battering are hopes that the democratic processes unleashed by the Arab Spring might mean that violent, anti-Western feeling was becoming a thing of the past. » | Nick Meo, Cairo and Colin Freeman, additional reporting by Richard Spencer in Cairo and Ruth Sherlock in Beirut | Saturday, September 15, 2012
My comment:
If anyone should be executed, it is he! Islam is totally and utterly incompatible with Western values. All these Muslims should NEVER have been allowed into the West in the first place. Now that they are here, any Muslim/Muslimah who is unwilling to reject this barbaric 'religion' should be sent packing forthwith. Enough already! – © Mark
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