Filming the Prophet

Judgment Day

Late last year they finally got him. Director of “The Message,” Moustapha Akkad, was killed in a terrorist bomb attack at a 5-star hotel in Amman, Jordan. It was a horrendous coincidence (poetic to the terrorists) that Moustapha was among the many “heretics” and “infidels” they randomly targeted at the hotel. What’s more, Moustapha’s 34-year-old daughter too lost her life.

Though no Salman Rushdie, Moustapha had been a much-hated figure among many sections of world’s Wahabi and Deobandi Muslims ever since he went ahead and shot a big-budgeted, Hollywood film on the life of Prophet Muhammad in 1976. Incidentally, though the film (“The Message”), was poorly received at the American box-office, over the years it became a massive cult classic among a number of more liberal minded Muslims, some of whom actually started to use it as part of their efforts to reform the commonly perceived face of Islam.

In fact, impressed by epics like “Jesus of Nazareth” and “The Ten Commandments,” Moustapha’s main goal was also to make a film on the Islamic prophet for a western audience who only saw him either through the eyes of Christian evangelists or the secular media. For this Moustapha also managed to sign up the services of veteran Hollywood actor, Anthony Quinn, who plays the role of Hamza.

While trying to raise funds for the film, Moustapha faced stiff resistance from Hollywood in making a film about the origins of Islam. Even though the reasons behind this were fears of monitory loss, the fact that with various Palestinian guerilla units being extremely active in the ‘70s (in collaboration with various Left-wing European groups), in attacking numerous Western and Israeli/Jew economic and political interests, it can not be dismissed that many in Hollywood also saw the making of this film as a way to counter the Western media’s take on Muslims in this regard.
Moustapha had to go outside the United States to raise the production money for the film. However, many Muslim governments, fearful of “offending” the large conservative sections of their own predominantly Muslim populations, were hesitant in financially and logistically supporting Moustapha. … Until word reached Libya’s Col. Qaddafi, then at the height of his defiantly anti-West and revolutionary, “Green Book” phase.
With the backing of the then radical Libyan government, the film was shot in Libya and parts of Morocco. While creating the plot, Moustapha consulted Islamic clerics and scholars and devised the storyline from the views he got from these gentlemen. As a token, Moustapha would also produce a film based on the struggle of radical Libyan nationalist, Omer Mukhtar, four years later (and also starring Anthony Quinn).

Though mindful of the fact that Islam did not allow the showing of the Muslim Prophet, the completed film failed to get a release in a majority of Muslim countries. Even in the United States some cinemas received threatening telephone calls from those who thought that the film offended Islam by portraying the Prophet in a physical way. The truth was Muhammad was never shown on screen.

On March 9, 1977, a group of Black Muslims, led by Hamas Abdul Khaalis, seized several buildings and took 134 hostages in the District of Columbia. While their actions were related to a sectarian dispute within the Black Muslim community, one of their demands was to prevent the release of “The Message.” One of the terrorists specifically said "he wanted a guarantee from whole world it will never be shown" or they would execute some of the hostages.

Holier than thou

Panned by western critics for pretending to be another “Lawrence of Arabia,” the film was kept at an arm’s length by most Muslim countries, especially those that came under the “American camp” (during the Cold War).

Apart from Shah’s Iran where a fundamentalist but indigenous Islamic movement had already gained momentum against the country’s pro-West monarchy, the so-called Islamic movements and forces in most other Muslim countries were largely being financed and backed by the United States and Saudi Arabia! A trend that would eventually evolve into the Mujahideen Movement in Afghanistan.

In Pakistan’s context, where “The Message” remained banned throughout Zia-ul-Haq’s dictatorship in the ‘80s. A majority of the country’s major politico-religious parties were all said to be on the payroll of the American CIA and Saudi Arabia. These parties’ main role (led by the Jamaat-e-Islami) was to demonize the Left and later fuel “jihad” in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union.

It is thus interesting to note that most of these parties were the first to condone and enforce Zia’s ban on “The Message,” even though thanks to the time’s rampant video rental boom (and racket!), shops having a video print of the film thrived.

Nobody’s quite sure as to why exactly these parties and the Pakistani government were so much against the showing of “The Message,” especially at a time when both the CIA and the Pakistani government were aggressively advertising and glorifying “jihad” and assorted Islamic propaganda to counter Soviet occupation of Afghanistan?

However, many do believe that the underlying message of the film was of a version of Islam that contradicted the versions being peddled by the Zia regime. And anyways, his hostility towards radical Muslim leaders such as Col. Qaddafi was no secret. Zia had also directly been involved as a hired Pakistan army man who led the Jordanian government’s armed onslaught against PLO camps in Jordan in 1970. Thus, a film that was seen by conservative Western political observers as an attempt by Libya to propagate the legitimacy of Qaddafi’s and the PLO’s struggle against the state of Israel and the United States, was a big no for those using increasingly conservative, militant and puritanical strains of Islam to recruit men for the so-called Mujahideen Movement in Afghanistan.

Some 30 years later after it was first released, with no Soviet Union in Afghanistan (or no Soviet Union at all!) and no Cold War dictates, “The Message” finally arrived in Pakistan beyond the shady videotape deal. Last year it was shown repeatedly on one of Pakistan’s biggest private TV channels, GEO-TV. This time however, there were no cries of “blasphemy.” The film’s original purpose remained intact: Not only to show the West “Islam’s true history and face,” but also to a whole generation of Muslims who for the last three decades had been indoctrinated with a rather violent and intolerant strain of Islam; the sort various Islamic governments had originally propagated it, but were now trying to distance themselves from, post-9/11.

It’s the spirit, dude!

Apart from tackling the political and religious fall-ins and fall-outs of making a film like “The Message,” Moustapha also had to pull off a convincing portrayal of the Prophet without ever being allowed to show him. He had to make a film whose protagonist was, in effect, absent. He knew what was at stake. No one had ever successfully attempted a film about the Prophet. If he pulled it off, he’d be the cinematic voice of the Muslim world. If not, they might literally kill him. Faced with such daunting dilemmas, Moustapha decided to shoot around the main character. Muhammad never appears in "The Message." He’s presented in the first-person. Moustapha uses the camera to represent what the Prophet sees. He goes places, people talk to him, but you don’t hear him.
Moustapha hired four seasoned Muslim clerics to oversee the production of the film that began shooting in Morocco in early 1976 and where a huge replica of the Kaaba was built. Soon the clerics got cold feet and quit! Then King Faisal of Saudi Arabia managed to convince Morocco’s King Hassan that the false Mecca built for the movie might draw pilgrims away from the real holy city (??). This saw the Moroccan government kicking out Moustapha off his own set, and out of Morocco. Moustapha was then invited by Qaddafi to Libya where much of the film was completed.

No learning lessons

The only other attempt to film the Muhammad came in 2002. This was the animated movie, "Muhammad, The Last Prophet," directed by Richard Rich, a veteran Disney animator who had also directed "The Fox and the Hound."

"The Last Prophet" was released in the Middle East after being sanctioned by the same Islamic authorities who had originally banned the appearance of Mohammed on film, and who now demanded that Hamza, the character portrayed by Anthony Quinn in "The Message," appear only from behind. The animated film borrows Moustapha’s “Prophet-cam technique”, and in one scene Mohammed is critically wounded in battle -- a rock hurtles into the camera!

"The Last Prophet" never hit U.S. theaters, and has yet to be released on DVD.