The director of The Message, Moustapha Akkad, was killed in a terrorist bomb attack at a five-star hotel in Amman, Jordan.

In 2005 they finally got him. The director of The Message, Moustapha Akkad, was killed in a terrorist bomb attack at a five-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. 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 puritan Muslims ever since he went ahead and shot a big-budgeted, Hollywood film on the life of Prophet Muhammad (Pbuh) in 1976. Incidentally, though the film 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 modern Islam, more so the political Islam of the likes of Abul Ala Maududi, Syed Qutb and their followers.

Moustapha’s main goal was also to make a film on the Prophet of Islam 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, 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 (albeit secular) Palestinian guerrilla units being aggressively active in the 1970s (in collaboration with various Left-wing European groups), in attacking numerous western and Israeli economic and political interests, it cannot 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 Muslim populations, were hesitant in supporting Moustapha. Shooting finally began in Morocco in early ’76 where a huge replica of the Kaaba was built. It is said that just then King Faisal of Saudi Arabia managed to convince Morocco’s King Hassan that the ‘Makkah’ built for the movie might draw pilgrims away from the real holy city and start a new cult of sorts. This saw the Moroccan government kicking Moustapha off his own set, and out of Morocco. Word reached Libya’s Colonel Qadhafi, then at the height of his defiantly anti-West and revolutionary “Green Book” phase, and Moustapha was invited to Libya where much of the film was completed.

Unfortunately 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 however was that the Prophet was never shown on screen. But this was not the only problem.

There were Islamic scholars and historians who criticised the film for basing its story on traditions of a ‘Sunni version of Islamic history,’ and ignoring contributions made in this respect by other schools of thought in Islam. These also included scholars and historians who claim that much of what is thought of as Islamic History is basically derived from traditions and writings by historians and ulema serving the political interests of the Abbasid caliphs. They claim that the primary sources of Islamic history are rare and hard to find between the Prophet’s death in 632 AD and 750 AD, when the first known biography of the prophet appeared — almost a hundred years after his passing.

On the fundamentalist front, 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 (Washington). While their actions were related to a sectarian dispute within the Black Muslim community in the US, one of their demands was to prevent the release of The Message.

Panned by western critics for pretending to be another Lawrence of Arabia, the film was kept at arm’s length by most Muslim countries, especially those that came under the ‘American camp’ (during the Cold War). In Pakistan, though the Z. A. Bhutto regime had planned to allow the showing of the film in 1976, it remained banned throughout Ziaul Haq’s dictatorship in the 1980s. Zia’s hostility towards radical Muslim leaders such as Col Qadhafi was no secret; he had also 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 Qadhafi’s and the PLO’s struggle against the state of Israel and the United States, was a big ‘no, no’ for those using increasingly conservative, militant and puritanical strains of Islam to recruit men for the so-called Mujahideen movement in Afghanistan — a strain the film supposedly was opposed to.

Some 30 years later after it was first released, The Message finally arrived in Pakistan and was shown repeatedly on one of Pakistan’s independent TV channels. This time however there were no cries of blasphemy. The film’s original purpose remained intact: Not only to show 'Islam’s true basics and face,' to the West but also to a whole generation of Muslims who, for the preceding three decades, had been indoctrinated with a rather violent and intolerant strain of the faith; the sort various Islamic governments had originally propagated, but were now trying to distance themselves from, post-9/11.

Much as the critics of the former general-president will have you believe, it must be acknowledged that Musharraf’s enlightened moderation, which liberalised the electronic media in Pakistan to new heights, brought about the sea change that took place under his reign in the social, cultural sphere. It’s ironical how the so-called liberal, elected governments in Pakistan have kowtowed to conservative elements, while an autocrat was able to actually roll back that conservatism.