these were my thoughts as well; but is there actually any evidence to even remotely suggest their involvement?

No

NPR and others are continuing to investigate. Looks like it was actually produced by a Coptic immigrant from Egypt (with a US bank fraud conviction in his past). A big part of the reason the movie is blowing up is an Egyptian Glenn Beck equivalent who likes to sensationalize everything as a threat to Islam has picked up on it.

So in a weird way the instinct is kind of through-the-looking-glass correct, except its the war on Allah in Egypt, not "creeping Sharia" in the US. I mean, leaving out all the actual differences between the US and Egypt, persecution of both Copts and fundamentalist Muslims by various past governments, etc.

News is coming out now that the whole thing was made by some militia/patriot movement fucktard who attempted to create the cover story so Jews would be blamed for its creation.

I loathe that people are taking sides on this, because both sides of this equation are vile and their actions are inexcusable.

"Everybody Make a Film About Mohammed Day" will probably spring from this.

Both parties are vile, but making a stupid, purposefully offensive movie because you're a racist mongoloid is in an entirely different level of vile than murdering people because they don't share you're delusional world view.

Its likely that the entire purpose of making this film was to incite religious zealots to violence.

That's not a different level of vile.

This can't be the only movie of its kind. From what I understand, the reason it was noticed was that it was translated into Arabic for some reason. If they do the rest of YouTube, the violence should increase a hundred fold.

From what I'm hearing, this is basically being used as an excuse for protests/riots among groups that were already looking for a reason to incite violence against the U.S. It doesn't help keep everyone calm that the riots are happening amongst people who don't have the same freedom of speech that we do. For them, shit like this movie, if produced where they live, would need some tacit approval from a government ministry or official, so naturally, it represents American views as far as they're concerned.

It all just makes me so angry at religions. Everyone involved claims to worship an all-powerful deity, yet said deity can't produce its own inflammatory movies or kill its own infidels for some reason. If you really believe your god is omnipotent, stand back and see if anything happens. If not, you might consider you're wrong about what your god wants. If you have a few more brain cells, you might realize your god is as fictional as Harry Potter...

I think this is what happens when you are raised in a country that trains everyone to think alike. The oppression of all thought that is not religiously or state sanctioned is now rampant in more places than the Middle East but it is a horrendous result of little to no education mixed with a complete intolerance for differing philosophy.

I can't imagine what it's like to be in a country where if you make the wrong joke about the wrong thing, no matter how bad the joke, you can get killed for it. I understand that people shouldn't try and get this result, to take advantage of the high amounts of ignorance and superstitious nonsense that are so prevalent in that part of the world, but the fact that it is such a culture of knee jerk violent reactions to every bit of humor associated with religion disturbs me to no end.

Professional religious zealot troll trolls other professional religious zealot trolls. If you think a grassroots protest mob just happened to bring along some RPGs then I don't think you're seeing the bigger picture.

If you think Christian groups wouldn't do the exact same thing if there wasn't a sane government keeping them in check you're fooling yourself.

@FABIO: Exactly. It's mind-boggling when some American Christian will point at violence in the Middle East and proclaim "My religion doesn't do that, religion of peace my ass, etc." all while failing to notice that the cultures and standards of living are wildly different. Not to mention the willful ignorance in the U.S. is largely self-inflicted, whereas in other places it's the standard operating procedure.

"This can't be the only movie of its kind."

Passion of the Sugartits.

The fact that people have caused deaths over this demonstrates a new low for current residents of the planet earth.

Who wants to start rioting over Life of Brian?

Give them time. The religious whackos just re-discovered birth control, so I'm sure Life of Brian will be the subject of a congressional hearing sometime around or after the 2012 elections.

It really does look like some SNL skit in terms of how its filmed.

Denial ain't just a river in Shitville Backwards Countries That Kill People for Not Obeying Religion