Pakistan minister puts bounty on anti-Islam film-maker
Islamabad, September 23, 2012
A Pakistani minister has offered $100,000 to anyone who kills the maker of an online video which insults Islam, as sporadic protests rumbled on across parts of the Muslim world.
"I announce today that this blasphemer, this sinner who has spoken nonsense about the holy Prophet, anyone who murders him, I will reward him with $100,000," Railways Minister Ghulam Ahmad Bilour told a news conference, to applause.
"I invite the Taliban brothers and the Al Qaeda brothers to join me in this blessed mission."
A spokesman for Pakistan's prime minister said the government disassociated itself from the minister's statement.
While many Muslim countries saw mostly peaceful protests on Friday, 15 people were killed in Pakistan during demonstrations over the video.
People involved in the film, an amateurish 13-minute clip of which was posted on YouTube, have said it was made by a 55-year-old California man, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula.
Nakoula has not returned to his home in the Los Angeles suburb of Cerritos since leaving voluntarily to be interviewed by federal authorities. His family has since gone into hiding.
In the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka on Saturday, thousands of Islamist activists clashed with police who used batons and teargas to clear an unauthorised protest. In Kano, northern Nigeria's biggest city, Shi'ite Muslims burned American flags, but their protest passed off peacefully.
The demonstrations were less widespread than on Friday, but showed anger still simmered around the world against the film and other insults against Islam in the West, including cartoons published by a French satirical magazine.
Showing continued nervousness among Western governments, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle called on Muslim countries to protect foreign embassies.
"The governments in host countries have the unconditional obligation to protect foreign missions. If that doesn't happen, we will emphatically criticise that and if it still doesn't happen it won't go without consequences," he told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper on Sunday
Germany's embassy in Sudan was stormed on Sept. 14 as was the US mission in the capital Khartoum where there were deadly clashes between police and protesters against the film.
In Egypt, the leader of Egypt's main ultra orthodox Islamist party, that shares power with the more moderate Muslim Brotherhood, said the film and the French cartoons were part of a rise of anti-Islamic actions since the Arab spring revolts.
"A new reality in the Middle East has emerged after the toppling of autocratic regime of Hosni Mubarak and others through democratic elections that brought newly-elected Islamist governments," Emad Abdel Ghaffour, leader of the Salafist Nour Party, told Reuters.
"There are interest groups who seek to escalate hatred to show newly-elected governments and their Muslim electorate as undemocratic," he said.
Nour, whose party is the second largest in parliament and plays a formidable force in Egypt's new politics, said President Mohamed Mursi should demand "legislation or a resolution to criminalise "contempt of Islam as a religion and its Prophet" at the UN General Assembly next week. - Reuters
