Controversial film about Muhammad to premiere tonight

Muhammad, Messenger of God is meant to be the first in a projected trilogy aimed at telling the story of the last prophet of Islam. A screening at Tehran’s Fajr film festival in February this year was cancelled because the country’s religious leader, Ali Khamenei, had not had time to give the film his private approval.

“Definitely, some countries, like Saudi Arabia, will have problems with this film but many Islamic countries – including Turkey, Indonesia, Malaysia and many others in Southeast Asia – have asked for the film”, says Majidi, who has won worldwide prizes, including the Oecumenical Special Award in Montreal, for promoting unity among religions.

While many planned showings of Muhammad in Shi’ite-majority Iran have already sold out, in the Sunni Muslim world, the production has triggered controversy. It features only shots of the prophet’s hands and legs as a baby and the back of his head as an adolescent. “We’ve been guilty of shortcomings in introducing the world to the real and true face of the prophet”.

Still, his solution is not enough for experts at Al-Azhar, a leading Sunni Muslim institution in Egypt.

“It is not permissible in Islam that someone (an actor) has contradictory and conflicting roles; sometimes we see him as a blind drunk, sometimes as a womanizer… and then he embodies a prophet… this is not permissible”.

While Iran has denounced cartoons of the prophet like those published by French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, Shiite Muslims are generally more relaxed than Sunnis about depictions of religious figures.

Iran’s late Supreme Leader issued a fatwa calling on Muslims to kill writer Salman Rushdie in 1988 for “The Satanic Verses”, a novel deemed blasphemous in its treatment of Mohammad and Islam.

The 171-minute biopic, directed by Iranian filmmaker Majid Majidi – a 1998 Academy Award nominee – cost $40 million to produce and was funded partly by the Iranian government.

The mood inside the press conference for the film – the first on the subject since Moustapha Akkad’s 1977 film The Message, and the first to visually depict the prophet – was conciliatory. It is not known whether the attack was related to the movie.

“The film starts with [the prophet’s] adolescence, and his childhood is shown through flashbacks”.

Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has visited the film set through the production, in a strong sign of support.

The movie of the Oscar-nominated Iranian director was shown at the opening of 39th edition of Montreal World Film Festival (MWFF) in Toronto.