July 2
A YouTube user, "Sam Bacile," uploads "Muhammad Movie Trailer," the 14-miunte clip that is all almost anyone has seen of the movie to date. Nobody pays attention.
Sept. 2
Bacile uploads an Arabic-lanugage version of the movie trailer to YouTube, then deletes it.
Sept. 4
Another Arabic-language version is uploaded by persons unknown.
Sept. 5
Morris Sedak, Washington, D.C.-based Coptic Christian and anti-Islam activist, starts promoting the movie trailer to journalists and via social media, timing his pitch to Florida pastor Terry Jones' "International Judge Muhammad Day" on Sept. 11.
Sept. 8
Egyptian television firebrand Sheik Khaled Abdalla airs part of the the Arabic version of the clip on local channel
Al Nas, condemning it harshly. The trailer's YouTube view-count skyrockets.
Sept. 10
Pastor Jones, known for threatening to burn the Koran on previous Sept. 11 anniversaries, announces that he will show part of the movie at his "Judge Muhammad Day."
Sept 11
Protesters decrying the movie storm the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, scaling the wall and replacing the American flag with a black one inscribed with a Muslim slogan used by militant groups. In Benghazi, Libya, a protest outside the U.S. consulate turns deadly when heavily armed militants, possibly using the protest as cover for a premeditated attack, kill U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other U.S. diplomatic personnel. "Sam Bacile"
talks to the
AP and
Wall Street Journal, claiming to be an Israeli-American real estate developer funded by Jewish donors.
Sept. 12
As protests spread to Tunisia and Morocco, Bacile's story
starts to unravel.
AP reporters and other journalists use his cell phone number and other clues to track him to the house of Coptic Christian activist Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, whose criminal history is littered with aliases very similar to "Bacile." Actors and crew from the movie say they were duped, and condemn the trailer, saying the film they made was a pre-Islam historical action flick,
Desert Warrior, that was later poorly overdubbed with anti-Islam language.
The anti-Islam-film riots A timeline - The Week
Perhaps you think the cartoons they rioted over were high quality? So what they may have gotten it wrong in that there was no massive protest in Benghazi like there was in Cairo before the assault, the assault was the protest.