Fears of being targeted by a Muslim Fatwah caused the producer of the blockbuster disaster film 2012 to censor out the destruction of an Islamic holy site — although three Christian icons are destroyed in graphic detail.

The film features a series of imaginary disasters which see world famous manmade structures destroyed. These include the Sistine Chapel and St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, and the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Brazil.

However, the original plot also called for the Kaaba, the cube-shaped building at the heart of Mecca to be destroyed.

“Well, I wanted to do that, I have to admit,” 2012 producer Roland Emmerich told the science fiction news source, Scifiwire.com.

“But my co-writer Harald [Kloser] said ‘I will not have a fatwa on my head because of a movie’,” Mr Emmerich said.

“And he was right. We have to all in the Western world think about this. You can actually let Christian symbols fall apart, but if you would do this with [an] Arab symbol, you would have a fatwa, and that sounds a little bit like what the state of this world is.

“So it’s just something which I kind of didn’t [think] was [an] important element, anyway, in the film, so I kind of left it out,” Mr Emmerich said.

The producer had however no qualms about depicting the destruction of Christian landmarks. In his latest film, the massive dome of St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican rolls on top of a crowd of churchgoers. The huge Christ the Redeemer statue that looms over Rio de Janeiro disintegrates into a pile of rubble.

This self-imposed censorship is a clear indicator of just how far the shadow of Islam has already fallen on the West. Ever since the uproar over the Danish “Mohammed” cartoons, increasing numbers of Westerners have been threatened by militant Islam.

Possibly Mr Emmerich was thinking of the Dutch filmmaker, Theo van Gogh. He was murdered by a Muslim living in Holland, Mohammed Bouyeri, on 2 November 2004 in Amsterdam.

Bouyeri shot Mr Van Gogh eight times and then cut his throat, nearly decapitating him. Finally he stabbed him in the chest. Two knives were left implanted in Mr Van Gogh’s torso, one attaching a five-page note to his body. The note threatened Western governments, Jews and an anti-Islamic asylum seeker, Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Imam Fawaz of the as-Sunnah Mosque in the Hague gave a sermon several weeks before the murder in which he called Theo van Gogh “a ‘criminal bastard’ and beseech[ed] Allah to visit an incurable disease upon the filmmaker.”

Such is the terror that the Islamic colonisation of the West brings. Let the warning not go unheeded.