Iran - Qatar duel on movies about Prophet Muhammad
Iran and Qatar are separately bringing the life of the Prophet Muhammad to the big screen. According to Arabian Gazette, Qatar-based Alnoor Holdings owned by the Al Hashemi Group has announced it will spend up to $1 billion for a series of seven films about the life of Prophet Mohammad, produced by Hollywood Producer Barrie Osborne, whose credits include blockbusters such as Lord of the Rings and the Matrix.
But the Qatari production seems to be rivaling a $30 million film about Prophet Mohmmad from an Iranian Shia perspective by famed Iranian director Majid Majidi (The Song of Sparrows, Children of Heaven), who began shooting the film last October.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Sunni-led Al Azhar University has called on Shiite Iran to ban the unfinished Majidi film because of his plan to show the prophet (but not his face). "It is a real political battle, as each side has a different interpretation of the Quran," says Iranian cinema scholar Philippe Ragel of the University of Toulouse.
On the contrary, Iranian news agency Mehr criticized the Qatari decision to recruit Hollywood for making the film on Prophet of Islam: "Along with Arab countries' adventurism on the issue of Persian Gulf Iranian isles, their media hosted Wahhabist anti-Iranian propaganda, focusing on 'Prophet Mohammed."
According to The Guardian the best-known film about the life of Muhammad The Message, is a 1977 film by Halloween producer Moustapha Akkad; described as the story of Islam, it was ultimately financed by Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi after Hollywood refused to fund it. Starring Anthony Quinn and Irene Papas, the film avoided any depiction of the prophet on screen. Even so, in March 1977, the film was named as a grievance (among others) by an armed group who took 149 hostages and killed a radio journalist and a police officer during a standoff in Washington DC.
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