The idea in one minute
This page looks at two films. The Message tells the story of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ (peace be upon him) without ever showing his face or voice. Kingdom of Heaven shows the leader Saladin. You will learn how filmmakers show faith on screen, and what they choose to leave unseen.
The question: How can a film show faith honestly, and what should it choose not to show?
Moustapha Akkad, a Syrian-born director, finished a three-hour historical film about the birth of Islam in 1976. Its central figure never appears. You never see his face, or his hand, or even, as the star Anthony Quinn put it, his shadow. You never hear his voice. And yet for many viewers around the world, The Message is still the film that first showed them who he was.
Nearly thirty years later, Ridley Scott made Kingdom of Heaven, about the Crusades. It was shown in Beirut. At the moment the Muslim sultan Saladin picks up a fallen cross and sets it gently back on an altar, the reporter Robert Fisk wrote that the audience 'rose to their feet and clapped'. Two films, two very different ways of putting faith on a screen.
In the makers' own words
“being a Muslim myself who lived in the west I felt that it was my obligation my duty to tell the truth about Islam”
Moustapha Akkad, 1976 interview · Quoted in Wikipedia, 'The Message (1976 film)', and NPR, 7 August 2016
“I thought I should tell the story that will bring this bridge”
Moustapha Akkad, 1976 interview · NPR, R. H. Greene, 7 August 2016
“Not only do you not see Muhammad, you never even see his shadow.”
Anthony Quinn, who played Hamza, quoted 2016 · NPR, 7 August 2016
“Story books are what we base our movies on, and what we base our characters on.”
Ridley Scott, answering historians' criticism, 2005 · Quoted in Wikipedia, 'Kingdom of Heaven (film)'
“rose to their feet and clapped and shouted their appreciation”
Robert Fisk, on a Beirut screening, 10 June 2005 · 'Screening Kingdom of Heaven in Beirut', CounterPunch
A film built around an absence
Most Muslims, across the main schools of thought, hold that the Prophet should not be portrayed by an actor, and most avoid any picture of him at all, out of reverence and to keep worship for God alone. Akkad, a Muslim who had moved to the United States to study film, wanted to tell the story to the West without breaking that rule. He consulted Muslim scholars throughout, and the script was approved by a scholar at al-Azhar, the great centre of learning in Cairo, although that approval was later withdrawn.
His solution was simple and bold. Whenever the Prophet is present, the camera takes his place. Other characters look straight into the lens, speak to him and repeat his words aloud. A small light on the camera marked his presence on set. The story is carried by those around him: his uncle Hamza, played by Anthony Quinn; Bilal, the freed slave who made the first call to prayer; and the Meccan leaders who opposed him. The Islamic scholar Khaled Abou El Fadl, a friend of Akkad, said: 'To figure out a way to have the prophet become a person without showing him, it was brilliant.'
Akkad filmed two versions at once, one in English and one in Arabic, with different casts on the same sets in Morocco and Libya. He said his aim was to 'bring this bridge' between the West and the Muslim world.
A costly bridge
The film's journey was not easy. Days before it opened in London's West End in July 1976, threats led Akkad to change its title from Mohammad, Messenger of God to The Message. It was banned for years in several Muslim-majority countries. In March 1977 an armed group in Washington, D.C., took hostages in three buildings over three days; two people died, and one of the group's demands was that the film be withdrawn.
In 2005 Akkad and his daughter Rima were killed in a suicide bombing at a hotel in Amman, Jordan, where they had gone to a wedding. Abou El Fadl called it the sense that 'some demonic power was mocking all our dreams'. Today The Message is shown in schools, mosques and on television around the world, and its 2018 4K restoration was released in cinemas.
Saladin and the cross
Kingdom of Heaven takes the opposite approach to faith on screen. It is full of crosses, crusaders, priests and prayers, and it shows violence on both sides, which is why it is a 15. Its hero, Balian, is a blacksmith who loses his faith and finds a conscience. Its most admired performance is by the Syrian actor Ghassan Massoud as Saladin, the Kurdish Muslim ruler who took Jerusalem in 1187.
Historians argued fiercely about the film. Jonathan Riley-Smith of Cambridge called it 'Osama bin Laden's version of history'. Thomas Madden said it widened the gap between what historians know and what the public believes. The scholar Hamid Dabashi, whom Scott consulted, praised it. Scott's answer was that 'story books are what we base our movies on'.
Some of the history behind the famous scenes is solid. When the First Crusade took Jerusalem in 1099, the city's Muslim and Jewish inhabitants were massacred. When Saladin retook it in 1187, after negotiating with the real Balian of Ibelin, he allowed most Christians to leave on payment of a ransom and freed many who could not pay. The film's moment with the fallen cross is invented. But it captures something that medieval Christian and Muslim writers both remembered: a ruler famous for mercy.
What the screen can show
Put side by side, the two films ask a real question. A camera is good at faces, battles and crowds. It is not good at the unseen: at God, at revelation, at what happens inside a person when they pray. The Message chose to show reverence by leaving its centre empty. Kingdom of Heaven showed faith through what people do, especially through mercy to an enemy. Its best line is Saladin's answer when Balian asks what Jerusalem is worth: 'Nothing.' Then, as he walks away: 'Everything.'
The Qur'an itself teaches that God is beyond sight: 'Vision comprehendeth Him not, but He comprehendeth (all) vision. He is the Subtile, the Aware.' (6:103, Pickthall). Perhaps the most honest films about faith are the ones that know where to stop.
The Names this touches
The contrast
The films imagine faith through a camera that sees faces, crowds and crosses, and through an empty space where the Prophet should be; the Names describe the One whom no vision reaches, who sees every heart, and whose peace and pardon are what both stories reach for.
As-Salām: Peace, the Source of peace: Mecca entered without a battle.
Al-ʿAfuww: The Pardoner: 'No blame on you today' (12:92).
Al-Baṣīr: The All-Seeing, whom no vision reaches (6:103).
What each faith says
Judaism
“Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, nor any manner of likeness, of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.”
Exodus 20:4 · JPS 1917
The second of the Ten Commandments forbids making 'a graven image, nor any manner of likeness' for worship (Exodus 20:4), and Judaism has never made pictures of God. Jewish tradition is more relaxed about the prophets: Moses has been played many times on screen, including in The Ten Commandments (1956) and The Prince of Egypt (1998), which consulted rabbis among many religious advisers. The line Judaism draws is around God Himself. Walk into a synagogue and you will find Hebrew words, patterns, lions and lamps, but never an image of God.
Jerusalem is at the heart of both films' world. Jewish prayer has turned towards it for thousands of years, and Psalm 122 asks for its peace. Jews were among the victims of the Crusaders in 1099, and among those Saladin later allowed to return to the city.
Christianity
“But I tell you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who mistreat you and persecute you.”
Matthew 5:44 · WEB
Most Christian traditions do depict Jesus, in icons, paintings and films such as The Chosen, because they believe that in him God became visible: 'The Word became flesh, and lived among us. We saw his glory' (John 1:14). Even so, early Hollywood was cautious. In Ben-Hur (1959), Jesus is seen only from behind or at a distance. The critic Dilys Powell noticed the same restraint in The Message and called it 'absolutely right'.
Kingdom of Heaven is also a film about Christians who forget their own faith. The cruellest characters carry crosses, and the hero's mercy is closer to Jesus' teaching than their crusade: 'love your enemies, bless those who curse you' (Matthew 5:44).
Islam
“Vision comprehendeth Him not, but He comprehendeth (all) vision. He is the Subtile, the Aware.”
Qur'an 6:103 · Pickthall (1930)
In Islam, no picture can represent God, because 'The Creator of the heavens and the earth. He hath made for you pairs of yourselves, and of the cattle also pairs, whereby He multiplieth you. Naught is as His likeness; and He is the Hearer, the Seer.' (42:11, Pickthall). Out of love and reverence, Muslims also do not portray the prophets, and above all the Prophet Muhammad, whose example is meant to be followed, not watched as a performance: 'Verily in the messenger of Allah ye have a good example for him who looketh unto Allah and the Last Day, and remembereth Allah much.' (33:21, Pickthall). That is why The Message found its way around the camera, and why Muslims are hurt when the rule is broken.
The film's climax is the Prophet's return to Mecca, which ends without a battle. Muslim historians record that he pardoned the people who had persecuted him, using the words the Qur'an gives to the prophet Joseph (peace be upon him) when he forgave his brothers: 'He said: Have no fear this day! May Allah forgive you, and He is the Most Merciful of those who show mercy.' (12:92, Pickthall). Saladin, in history and in the film, was remembered for following that example.
Same and different
Judaism and Islam refuse to picture God, while Christians picture Christ, whom they believe is God made visible; all three treat Jerusalem as holy. They differ on depicting prophets. Most Christians depict Jesus, believing God became visible in him; Jewish tradition allows Moses on screen but never God; Muslims do not portray the Prophet Muhammad or the other prophets at all.
Go deeper
- NPR: 40 years on, a controversial film on Islam's origins is now a classic (2016) · article
- Encyclopaedia Britannica: Saladin · encyclopaedia
- Robert Fisk, 'Screening Kingdom of Heaven in Beirut' (2005) · article
- Qur'an 12:92 with translations · scripture
- Encyclopaedia Britannica: The Crusades · encyclopaedia
- Exodus 20 (Sefaria) · scripture
- John 1 (Bible Gateway, WEB) · scripture
Sources (6)
- Never directly depicted; light on camera; script approved then revoked by al-Azhar; consulted clerics; two versions; title change July 1976; Akkad's 1976 quote; Dilys Powell: Wikipedia, 'The Message (1976 film)'
- Quinn and Abou El Fadl quotes; characters address the camera; 1977 Washington siege; Akkad's death in Amman, 2005: NPR (R. H. Greene), 7 August 2016, republished by KUNC
- Beirut audience 'rose to their feet': Robert Fisk, CounterPunch, 10 June 2005
- Riley-Smith, Madden, Dabashi, Scott quotes; Massoud praised: Wikipedia, 'Kingdom of Heaven (film)'
- 1099 massacre; Saladin's 1187 terms with Balian: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 'Saladin'; 'Crusades'
- BBFC: Kingdom of Heaven 15; The Message (Arabic version) PG: BBFC
