This is some great reporting by McKay Coppins from Buzzfeed. It turns out the the people behind the anti-Muslim video also run an anti-Mormon web site. You can read more here.
Steve Klein, one of the men behind the anti-Muslim video tied to riots in the Middle East and North Africa, doesn’t restrict his fervor to attacks on Islam: He also runs one of the most prominent anti-Mormon sites on the web.
Klein, an insurance agent and Christian activist from California, has become the face of the movie, “Innocence of Muslims,” promoting it in the press as movie’s director is, reportedly, in hiding.
His most recent foray into religious provocation though, was hardly his first. In 1977, Klein founded a group called Courageous Christians United, whose main focus is to expose Mormonism and Islam — both “false religions” and “cults” according to Klein — with protests outside their places of worship, low-rent media productions like the now-viral Youtube video, and SEO-efficient web properties.
By the way, I watched “Innocence of Muslims” on Youtube, and it is horrible, not worth the effort, highly offensive, disgraceful, etc. I’m sure the anti-Mormon web site (which we will not promote here) is equally as bad.
I feel like rioting, who’s up for one?
Nah, I think I’ll go to the temple instead.
Courageous Christians United has fired him, and disavowed any involvement in the making of the video. He has been removed from their board of trustees.
He got taken if he paid five million for that movie. Looks like something that could have been shot and produced into cans for under $100k.
Which would make sense, given the director’s record.
Don’t forget that this “movie” that no one has ever heard of by a director that no one has ever heard of was watched by every Muslim in the Middle East.*snark*
By the way, did you know that Bill Maher (that classy guy) made a movie that spent 20 minutes lambasting Islam? Then again, he gave Obama 1 million dollars and lambasted Christianity (including Mormonism) so its nothing to worry about. Apparently no one watched it anyway, especially Muslims or there would have been riots and murder.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Hollywood/2012/09/15/Obama-Contribution-Anti-Islam-Filmmaker
I”m all for a good riot, if there will be refreshments afterwards….can we get a committe on that?
Ah, so maybe now the press will spin this into a blame Romney. It’s all Mitt’s fault that he was arrested, I mean, taken in for questioning in the dead of night about his films.
It looks like Islam needs a Mormon skin.
Based on “our” reactions to people protesting outside our temples not so many months ago, I wouldn’t act as though “we” have the high ground.
SilverRain, compared to what happened in the Middle East last week, we most certainly do have the high ground.
Uh, what was “our” reaction to protesting outside the temples?
SR, I have to admit that a bit of grumbling about people protesting outside the temples does not compare to anything I am seeing on this subject. I am not sure what you are referring to.
Perhaps referring to that time when someone started going crazy and turning over tables and hitting people with a whip for their inappropriate activity in and around the temple?
On a side note, I don’t think we know just what to do with that story…
They weren’t covered heavily, but the news stations here reported a few attacks by Mormons on protesters around the temple during Prop 8. Granted, it wasn’t nearly as bad as what happened to the U.S. Embassy, but my hackles go up when groups of people start crowing about how much better their group is than other groups. We have members of our church that, unfortunately, do not act as they should.
I have lived many places, met many people. No group has a monopoly on kindness, nor on viciousness. Can’t we condemn the viciousness without extrapolating it to all of Islam?
“Granted, it wasn’t nearly as bad as what happened to the U.S. Embassy”
Understatement of the year.
Can’t we condemn the viciousness of Islamic mobs storming several US embassies, burning our flag and killing our diplomats without comparing it to rumored Mormon “attacks” on protesters during prop 8?
SR, for the record, I was following the news pretty closely after Prop 8, and I remember a lot of stories about very ugly protests at the LA temple but I don’t remember any stories about “attacks by Mormons on protesters.” If you mean verbal attacks, yes, but physical attacks? No.