DUBAI, Nov 11: Hollywood Arab film director Moustapha Akkad has died in hospital from wounds sustained in this week’s hotel bomb attacks in Jordan, Arab television stations said on Friday.
One of the few Arab directors known in the West, the Syrian-born Akkad had been staying in one of three luxury hotels hit by suicide bombers in Amman on Wednesday, killing at least 56 people, Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya said.
His daughter was killed immediately in one of the blasts.
Akkad is best known for his 1977 Oscar-nominated epic “The Message: The Story of Islam”, starring Anthony Quinn and Irene Papas. He was also executive producer of the “Halloween” horror films.
In his controversial epic about early Islam, Akkad faced the challenge of shooting a movie where viewers neither see nor hear the Holy Prophet (pbuh). Quinn played the role of Prophet’s uncle, Hazrat Hamza.
Born in Aleppo in 1935, Akkad also directed the 1981 film “Lion of the Desert”, in which Quinn starred as Libyan anti-colonial fighter Omar Mukhtar.
According to movie website IMDB.com, Akkad left home at 19 to go and study film in California. His son, Malek, is also a Hollywood producer.
He had in the past lambasted Hollywood for its stereotyping of Arabs as terrorists.
“We cannot say there are no Arab and no Muslim terrorists,” Akkad said in an interview with the New York Times in 1998. “Of course there are.
“But at the same time, balance it with the image of the normal human being, the Arab-American, the family man,” he said.
“The lack of anyone showing the other side makes it stand out that in Hollywood, Muslims are only terrorists.”—Reuters/ AFP
