How films have handled the Prophet

Imagine making a three-hour epic about a man, and never once showing him. No face. No hand. Not even a shadow. That is what the film-maker Moustapha Akkad did in 1976, and it is still one of the most daring choices in cinema.

The film built around an absence

Akkad's film The Message tells the story of the birth of Islam. Most Muslims hold that the Prophet Muhammad should never be portrayed by an actor, out of love and reverence, and to keep worship for God alone. So Akkad let the camera stand where the Prophet stands. Other characters look into the lens and speak to him. We hear his words only when someone repeats them. He is never seen and never heard, yet he is felt in every scene. Akkad shot the film twice, once in English and once in Arabic, with two different casts. You can read the full story in our closer look How do you film faith?

Majidi's Muhammad, 2015

Nearly forty years later, the Iranian director Majid Majidi, already famous for Children of Heaven, made Muhammad: The Messenger of God. It tells of the Prophet's childhood, up to about the age of thirteen. It cost around 40 million US dollars, more than any Iranian film before it, and opened in August 2015 in Iran and at the Montreal World Film Festival.

Majidi took a different route from Akkad. A boy plays the young Prophet, but his face never appears. He is filmed from behind or in shadow, and in some scenes his voice is heard. Majidi said he made the film to answer fear of Islam in the West.

Many Muslim scholars said this was still too much. Al-Azhar in Cairo, the oldest centre of Sunni learning, asked for the film not to be shown, because Islamic law, its scholars said, forbids embodying the prophets. Others defended the film's care, and critics praised its craft. Muslims have long agreed that the Prophet Muhammad should not be shown. They differ over other prophets: some productions made in Iran have shown prophets such as Joseph, which Sunni scholars at Al-Azhar opposed. That debate is about reverence, and it is still going on. We mention Majidi's film here so that you know it exists. We do not link to it, and we show no image from it.

Jewish tradition: no image of God, and a humble Moses

For Jews, the line is drawn around God. "Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, nor any manner of likeness" (Exodus 20:4, JPS 1917). At Sinai, the people heard a voice but "saw no manner of form" (Deuteronomy 4:15, JPS 1917). People, even the greatest prophets, are a different matter. In the third century, Jews at Dura-Europos, on the river Euphrates, painted Moses on their synagogue walls seven times. God appears there only as a hand reaching down from heaven.

So Jewish viewers have often enjoyed films about Moses, while keeping him human. The Hebrew Bible says no one knows where he is buried (Deuteronomy 34:6), and the Passover story told at the family table puts God, not Moses, at its centre. When DreamWorks made The Prince of Egypt in 1998, it showed early versions to Jewish, Christian and Muslim scholars and listened to their notes. The film still gave God a voice: Val Kilmer, who played Moses, also voiced God, without a credit.

Christian tradition: the God who was seen

Christians start from a different place. They believe that in Jesus, God became a man who could be seen and touched. Jesus is "the image of the invisible God" (Colossians 1:15, WEB). Because of this, the Church defended painting Christ in icons at the Second Council of Nicaea in 787, and Christian art has shown him ever since. Villagers in Oberammergau, Germany, have acted out his Passion since 1634.

Cinema followed. Cecil B. DeMille filmed the life of Jesus in The King of Kings in 1927, and Moses twice in The Ten Commandments, in 1923 and again in 1956 with Charlton Heston. Franco Zeffirelli's Jesus of Nazareth (1977) is still shown at Easter. Today The Chosen, which began in 2019 and was largely paid for by its viewers, shows Jesus among his friends. Most Christians debate how to do this well, not whether; some Reformed Christians hold that Christ should not be pictured at all. Jewish writers have asked a different question: how are the Jews of Jesus's day shown? Some praise The Chosen for its Jewish detail. Others feel only the Jews who follow Jesus come off well.

Noah: one film, three responses

Darren Aronofsky's Noah (2014) shows how differently the three faiths can see one film. Al-Azhar objected that showing a prophet at all goes against the honour owed to prophets. Christian reviewers split between "offensive" and "serious theology". Rabbis at an early screening were largely positive, because retelling a Bible story with new detail is an old Jewish art called midrash. We mention Noah in words only.

What we take from this

Three faiths, three lines, each drawn from love. Jews will not picture God. Christians picture Christ because they believe God was seen in him. Muslims will not picture any prophet, above all the Prophet Muhammad. Each is a way of saying the same thing: some things are too great for a face. So on this site we show the world those stories happened in, and leave the rest to the imagination, where awe lives.

Sources: RFE/RL, 29 Aug 2015 (Al-Azhar and Majidi's film); The New Arab, "A different perspective on Muhammad: The Messenger of God"; Egypt Independent on the Prophet Joseph series; Wikipedia, "Dura-Europos synagogue"; Kveller, "11 things you didn't know about The Prince of Egypt"; Mosaic, May 2023, and the Forward on The Chosen; RNZ, 7 Mar 2014, and Jewish Standard, 28 Mar 2014, on Noah. Scripture: JPS 1917 (Sefaria) and World English Bible.