When I heard that the director who made Children of Heaven and The Colour of Paradise was making a movie on Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), I felt elated. Both movies are so beautiful and tender that I wondered if non-Muslims would consider converting to Islam after watching his new one. My mind recalled the movie The Message by Syrian director Moustapha Akkad made in 1976 in which there are no shots of the person of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), no sound of his voice, no shadow on the ground, nothing but silence when it came to him. Then on May 25, 2015, I saw the beginning of a clip of Majidi’s movie online and after the first minute or so turned my eyes away in agony.
In case the world needs any further reminding after the current fiascos over mere cartoons, categorically in Islam, no physical depiction of any reverent figures is allowed, much less that of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). Majidi shows the back of the child playing the title role throughout the clip and there is some much talked about angled shot against the sky, which will likely show more. The director defends his position by saying Shia Islam allows for more flexibility in the matter. And this is where the trouble begins.
There are several issues of urgent and considerable worry here for Muslims in general, the first of which is the tension this movie will most likely cause between Sunnis and Shias in countries where the sects are not already at each other’s throats. Elements in both groups that are ready to draw each other’s blood over minor issues will slaughter each other over any confrontation, even a conversation, regarding a movie such as this. On top of that the fact that the movie is clearly a planned political venture by the Iranian government makes matters much more diabolical.
Majidi has “the support of Iran’s ministry of culture and Islamic guidance, which called the film ‘exemplary’” and “the film appears to have the support of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s current supreme leader, who attended an inauguration of the film’s set in 2012”. A film about religion backed by politicians; talk about a sure recipe for disaster. Clearly, Iran, where drama serials on different religious characters are apparently quite the norm, has no consideration for the safety of their fellow Shia brethren from the backlash of this film, be it real or manufactured, knowing that they form small minorities in almost every other country in the world.
Secondly — and this is of critical importance even more so than any bloodletting that it may cause between the Muslims — if the movie is released as planned by its producers “in Arabic, Persian and English, with showings across Iran and abroad in the summer”, it will mark the beginning of the end of any sanctity that is shown to the figure who is the holiest of all to Muslims, the one person they are bound by their faith to love more than themselves and any other. Those who wish to destroy that sacredness just as they have destroyed that of the other prophets, markedly the Prophet Jesus, reducing him to their chosen versions of derision, see Majidi’s movie as the answer to the timeless problem of how to do the same to the Prophet of Islam (PBUH). The movie and others like it tackles the issue of the infallibility of the Quran, the text of which is protected from change by God Himself, by allowing different sects to portray via film their own “interpretations” of it, thus creating the same impression; versions where they do not exist. Not exactly the same thing but for most people, especially the youth, it will do the damage intended.
Thirdly, the movie is providing a channel for the hideous outpouring of lack of respect for Islam’s holiest person in the form of online comments on less sophisticated sites like Yahoo News and others. No doubt this has been done before but for it to happen as a result of Muslims making movies is incomprehensible and deeply disturbing. I could not even read the first two lines of the first comment before I felt my heart pounding and closed the page where the idiots of the world look to mark their name alongside their ignorance as often as possible. Was Majidi aware that this would happen? It does not matter. He is now the cause for it and the consequences will be his alone to bear.
(To be continued)
The writer is a freelance columnist