My great-grandfather Rasim Tabaković served as an imam within the jap Bosnian city of Višegrad. At all times impeccably dressed and sporting a white prayer hat when he left his home, imam Rasim was the non secular chief of the Muslim neighborhood on this picturesque city on the Drina River.
Muslims have been a minority in communist Yugoslavia and due to the regime’s suppression of faith, practising Muslims have been a minority throughout the minority.
Individuals like my great-grandfather stood as pillars within the communities of believers. He handed away within the late Eighties and continues to be fondly remembered by Bosniaks from the Višegrad area and past for his uprightness.
As a deeply pious man, he was not excited by cinema, which at the moment was displaying movies largely reflecting communist propaganda, which he didn’t relate to.
That’s the reason when imam Rasim took my great-grandmother Hafiza to the cinema within the late Nineteen Seventies – for the primary and solely time, so far as individuals can keep in mind – it was a special day.
The screening Rasim took Hafiza to was of no unusual movie. It was The Message, a movie directed by Syrian-American filmmaker Moustapha Akkad and starring Antony Quinn. It informed the story of the start of Islam and the mission of Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, to unfold the Revelation.
It was a long-awaited screening and the theatre in Višegrad was full of Muslims of all generations. Even in Sarajevo, the place my mother and father Fikret and Hamida have been finding out legislation at the moment, the cinemas have been full of individuals desperate to see this exceptional movie.
For Bosnian Muslims dwelling beneath communism, the discharge of The Message was a landmark occasion. It marked the start of the return of faith to public life, because the communist regime was adopting a much less inflexible method to Islam and different faiths.
For the primary time, practising Bosnian Muslims have been seeing on the massive display what they’d realized at house and in mosques in regards to the historical past of Islam. Many marvelled on the highly effective impression that the movie had and Akkad’s potential to convey the historical past and messages of Islam in a method that they deemed religiously applicable utilizing a medium normally devoted to leisure. Imam Rasim himself was deeply impressed by the movie.
Quinn’s exceptionally spectacular portrayal of the Prophet’s (PBUH) uncle Hamza conveyed on display his fortitude and decisiveness. The Mexican-born Quinn, whose actual title was Manuel Antonio Rodolfo Quinn Oaxaca, seemingly by no means imagined within the mid-Nineteen Seventies the extent to which his function on this movie would popularise the title Hamza. The title turned particularly common within the late Eighties and 90s.
Unsurprisingly, The Message become an academic useful resource for Bosnian Muslims.
I keep in mind watching the movie at my grandmother Hafa’s home in Višegrad. She used to indicate it to us – her grandchildren – on VHS. It was nonetheless communist Yugoslavia at the moment and it was solely after the collapse of the regime and Bosnia’s independence and liberalisation within the early Nineteen Nineties that the movie began being proven on TV.
Once we moved to Malaysia within the mid-Nineteen Nineties due to my father’s educating job at a Kuala Lumpur college, I noticed the movie featured on TV as nicely.
I realised that from the Balkans to Southeast Asia, The Message had develop into a favorite film for Muslim communities. The success was not solely resulting from Akkad’s exceptional talent as a director but in addition as a result of there are merely not that many movies on Islamic themes of the identical high quality and scope.
The opposite movie frequently screened throughout Ramadan and the Eids is Lion of the Dessert, which can also be directed by Akkad and options Quinn. It tells the story of Libyan chief and imam Omar al-Mukhtar resisting the Italian colonial invasion of his nation within the Nineteen Twenties and early 30s.
Akkad’s two epics have been so distinctive that different productions couldn’t match them. I keep in mind how throughout one prolonged Eid vacation in Malaysia within the Nineteen Nineties, a TV station ran out of Islam-themed movies to indicate, so it determined to placed on the Orientalist and extremely controversial function Lawrence of Arabia. This prompted one Turkish professor educating at a Malaysian college to put in writing a criticism to the channel.
Certainly, Akkad’s expertise for portraying the historical past of Islam and telling the story of Omar al-Mukhtar is unparalleled. No different director has achieved what he has. Akkad went on to supply different movies and his profession in Hollywood was by any measure successful.
He tragically misplaced his life, alongside along with his daughter Rima, within the 2005 Amman bombings carried out by al-Qaeda. It’s certainly ironic that the filmmaker who did a lot to unfold the message of Islam via movie was killed by terrorists.
The impression and affect of his most necessary work has outlived him. From Višegrad to Kuala Lumpur and past, the impression of The Message has been immeasurable. The movie is Akkad’s distinctive contribution and his lasting legacy. It’s his most consequential waqf.
The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially mirror Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.