German Anti-Islam Group Plans to Screen Movie

Government wrestles with free speech vs. public safety
By Liam Carnahan,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 19, 2012 3:24 PM CDT
German Anti-Islam Group Plans to Screen Movie
A clip from the trailer of Innocence of Muslims.   (YouTube)

An anti-Muslim organization in Germany plans a public screening of the controversial movie the Innocence of Muslims, reports the Christian Science Monitor. Officials in Germany are weighing whether the screening should be banned for the sake of public safety, or whether forbidding it would violate free-speech rights. The small right-wing group "Pro Deutschland" already hosted the video on its website briefly, but the public screening might amount to "recklessly pouring oil on the fire," says the nation's interior minister. No word yet on a final decision.

Meanwhile, Steve Inskeep at the Atlantic points out that one key player in the controversy has gone largely unnoticed: Egypt's Al NasTV station, which aired the video and first made it famous. "Rioters bear responsibility for rioting, not TV anchors," writes Inskeep. "But Al Nas broadcasters must now ask, as Western journalists sometimes do, if they lunged at an incendiary story and ended up getting used." (More Innocence of Muslims stories.)

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