Mustafa Akkad................

Mustafa Akkad - 1^st July 1930-November 11, 2005

Abu Hurayra (R.A) narrated that Prophet (P.B.U.H) said: before the end of times; ‘People will see such days that the killer will not know why he kills, nor the innocent why they are slain”.

9 years ago in 2005, this Prediction of the Prophet (PBUH)   was horribly exemplified when in a hotel bomb blast in Amman-Jordan, an American-Syrian film maker Mustafa Akkad was killed with his daughter along with many others who gathered there for a wedding.

Soft spoken Mustapha Akkad was one of those rare Muslims who took this task honestly to tell about the history of Islam and its early personalities through the medium he knew best “Film Making”. He dedicated his efforts to the religion he followed and he saw the film as a way to bridge the gap between the Western and Islamic world, stating in a 1976 interview: “I did the film because it is a personal thing for me. Besides its production values as a film, it has its story, its intrigue, its drama. Beside all this I think there was something personal, being Muslim myself who lived in the west I felt that it was my obligation my duty to tell the truth about Islam. It is a religion that has a 700 million following, yet it's so little known about it which surprised me. I thought I should tell the story that will bring this bridge, this gap to the west”.

For most of the Ajami  (non-Arabic) speaking population  following Islam significantly in the Indian sub-continent, the knowledge of religion is limited to memorizing few Verses  from Quran and observing  other compulsory obligations without knowing their meanings .  For the people of my generation, Mustapha Akkad’s film “The Message” was an elementary lesson on the early history of Islam and ordeals the prophet (PBUH) went through in delivering divine teachings to his people. This film gave us preliminary information about central characters of Islam during this period. In fact only after watching this film the curiosity was developed to know about the religion we have been following all our lives without proper understanding.

Whether or not, the portrayal of some of revered Islamic characters was correct, is a separate debate, on the whole it was a beautifully made film  in Arabic and English languages with separate cast. The film was made with near perfection and this can be well understood from an incident of film’s shooting. One scene had to be shot to show Prophet’s (PBUH) Camel sitting on ground after he reached Medina on Hijra from Mecca. It took 14 patient days to can this scene to show the camel sitting naturally on its own. In fact a small mud mound had to be made on ground and a crew member lay behind it with camel fodder day after day to make the camel sit and eat from it and this happened on 14^th day as told by the Producer himself in one of his interviews.

In early nineties, we watched this film on VCR and we were enthralled by beautiful background music whenever Prophet’s (PBUH) presence was to be shown without actually showing him and this music is still played on radio Kuwait during Adhan times.

After “The Message” he produced “Omar Mukhtar” The lion of desert, on the life and mission of Libyan Freedom fighter who fought valiantly against Italian occupation. He is said to have been working on producing a film on Sultan Salah Uddin a great Islamic character when he died in that bomb blast. This film with Sean Connery in lead role would have been yet another gift to ignorant Muslim masses who depend on such efforts to learn about Islam’s glorious past.

On his birth anniversary on July 1 we pay rich tributes to this great son of soil who was one sane voice in this present blood thirsty world where innocents are killed for no reasons at all.