JEDDAH, 22 November 2004 — “Muhammad, The Last Prophet,” an animated movie telling the events surrounding the birth of Islam, was set to open in the United States in 2002, but was shelved after the 9/11 attacks for fear of anti-Muslim sentiment.
Financed by a Saudi production company and directed by former Disney director Richard Rich, the film was intended to bring to Western audiences a more positive view of Islam than the one they are receiving through mainstream media.
“Muhammad, The Last Prophet,” a two-year, $10-million undertaking, a cartoon running for more than 90 minutes, is about a phenomena that began 1,400 years ago.
“In a volatile political climate such as today’s, there is a lot of interest in learning about Islam and Muslims and the legacy of the Prophet,” said Osama Jammal, chief executive of the Joliet, Illinois-based Fine Media Group, and the movie’s North American distributors.
“There’s also a need to try to explain the religion and the Prophet in a historically accurate way. Hopefully, this movie can help in this,” he said.
Jammal carefully timed the film’s US debut to coincide with Eid Al-Fitr. It was, he said, the ideal time to release a movie “that will hopefully help Muslims celebrate their history.”
But making a movie about Islam’s Prophet — even in the most tranquil of political times — is a difficult undertaking. Islam bans depicting the Prophet Muhammad or his closest followers and the film’s producers were careful not to show his face.
Many of the scenes were shot to allow viewers to see the images through his eyes, and such care earned the film the approval of clerics at Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, the foremost theological institute in the Sunni Muslim world.
The result is a well-produced movie that Jammal says is the first feature length movie produced by the Muslim community to be shown on the big screen in America.
The movie begins with a couple and their young daughter meeting a destitute old man whom they bring home in the spirit of charity advocated by Islam.
At their home, they begin to tell the story of Muhammad, starting from the first revelations on Mount Hira when the Angel Gabriel appeared to the Prophet — then 40-years-old — and urged him, “Read.”
The story unfolds with Muhammad, a merchant in the city of Makkah, first doubting the revelations, but quickly finding support and encouragement from his wife, Khadija — the first to convert.
The film makes a point of showing the respect with which Muhammad held other monotheistic faiths. Twice there are references to Islam’s God also being the God of Jews and Christians. It’s a message of tolerance that viewers said is painfully absent today, both on the part of extremist Muslims and many in the West. “It’s a great way for the children to learn about the religion in a constructive way and to truly understand its spirit and the Prophet’s message,” said a family who attended the movie in a predominantly Russian neighborhood in Brooklyn.
Unlike Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of Christ,” the opening of “Muhammad” in the United States seems to have caused little controversy.