What is the difference between a “Muslim Film” and a “Film made by Muslim Filmmakers” ? The ones who answer this question will shape the future of our da’wah in The West.
As I see it, it goes like this: The few tentative stabs that we have extended into this field so far generally fall into a category I call “Muslim Films”. These are the short films you usually see on YouTube, whose main characteristics are a basic or non-existent story and a protagonist who is less of a character and more of a cardboard cut-out of a generic half-Muslim audience member, with a development arc that does not extend past the reversion template, with no stakes, emotion, depth, tension, drama or interest outside of preaching a “this [insert thing] is bad, change like this guy did”. They also feature copious amount of groaning, head-in hands, pensive stares, and arms-round-shoulders from thobe-clad friends.
Islam is reduced to a product that is sold to the audience. “You have these problems? Here’s how Islam can fix them”. They may as well add a subtitle saying, “Take 5 times a day with water”.
It’s Islamic product placement.
This form of filmmaking may be OK as a teething phase for now, as we start to feel out the space, learning toolsets and workflows, and building experience, but it cannot be allowed to become the norm.
Films made like this have no reach and no influence. They restrict themselves to a tiny minority of the population (half-Muslim youth or younger adults who have a friend or family member to send it to them with some prior experience of Islam) and so come across more as propaganda than a story that entertains and inspires.
They also have no financial potential, as, even if they have a “theatrical run”, they’re limited to private screenings that occur once or twice in a few cities, which probably only makes enough to pay back the booking fee. Then beyond that, the options are either to upload it to YouTube for free or sit on it as Netflix would never take it. This removes any possibility of using the returns it generates to grow the studio’s resources in order to ramp up future budgets over time.
These two factors, highlighted in the fact that not one of these types of films, to the best of my knowledge, has ever made over £100k, shows their defective capability to be vehicles of da’wah to the masses at large.
However, there have been a few exceptional efforts. These are films made by Muslim Filmmakers. They transcend the low forms of propaganda and rise to the level of Art.
If I were to name but one, it would be Moustapha Akkads 1981 historical epic Lion of The Desert, which details the life of Libyan freedom fighter Omar Al-Mukhtar and his struggle against the Italian Military Colonisers during the reign of Mussolini. It had a budget of $35 Million dollars, a paltry figure in modern Hollywood, yet, even on a purely technical level, it is an achievement. The period tanks and cars re-enacting battles with horse riders in the desert, the stirring performances from Anthony Quinn and Oliver Reed, and the rich sets of the Italian Command Centres all rise far above anything attempted today. And once you factor in the story that begins with the eponymous hero teaching Surah Rahman at Madrassah and ends with him reciting from his pocket Qur’an moments before he is hung, you can begin to see the outline of what a true Muslim film would look like.
Now if we were to contrast this with what we have today, you may see the issue we have. It seems that there are two serious efforts in The West today: that of Boonaa Mohammed in Canada, and Shoaib Hussain in the UK. Having been affiliated with the latter, I will mention that briefly. “2 Sides” follows a Muslim Teenager as he grapples with the pull between the desire to fit in that pushes him towards the street life, and his Islamic life which tries to help him, ultimately ending in tragedy. Shot over the course of a year, it mostly utilised the streets of Wycombe as sets, with a couple thousand pounds as its budget. Looking across the Atlantic, “Purple Don’t Cry” has a similar story to tell. The director of that film, Mamoun S Hassan, says as part of his directors’ statement: “it’s a reflection of my own youth and struggles I faced growing up in a society that viewed me and those like me as “other” … it’s inspired by real life events”.
We now have an example of two types of Muslim Film, both “based on real events”. Which would you rather watch? Perhaps if I was Muslim, young, and involved in that lifestyle I would choose the latter. But what if I was non-Muslim? Would I be able to connect? What if I was old? What if I simply didn’t have any of those problems? In the end, the percentage of the total population that this film would be relevant to is, realistically, tiny.
But with the former, I could be non-Muslim and still resonate with the themes of resisting occupation. I could be old or young and resonate with a man who gives his all to a cause. I don’t have to have lived through those events to identify with its themes, and that gives it a form of universal appeal.
When comparing the two styles, the problem, I feel, lies in an immature approach to expressing one’s emotions. Muslims continuously feel, with reason, that they have a lot of societal problems, especially with regards to the youth, and so creating a film that can act as a way to reach those people and say “we understand, here’s a way of dealing with it through Islam” may be an understandable reaction. The issue is when that seems to be all we’re capable of.
The solution, I feel, is to change how we view the work we produce. We should not create “Muslim Films” but “Films made by Muslims”. The difference is that Muslims do not need to be the primary audience. A trailer for a film made by a Muslim could play at the Super Bowl and the audience would be none the wiser. They would be able to choose to watch it out of interest and take their families too. And it is only at that stage could we then work to promote positive messages that would truly reach the masses.
The one lone example I have found of this in modern times is M. Ahsan Al-Haadees novel “The Eternity Train”. Its fantastical plot of a girl getting trapped on an infinite train and being transported to a magical land where a mythical Conductor is said to control all surprisingly reveals itself at the eleventh hour to be a deeply moving and thought-provoking analysis of traumatic grief and the scarring effects it can have on us. That is a universal story with a universal theme, yet it still has time to insert Muslim ideas about God and Creation, within the context of the story.
This is the fundamental shift that we need to make: that our stories should not be just ours. We must find the creativity to extract the universal messages we wish to convey and place them within the subtext of a thoroughly entertaining story.
Only then will we begin to be able to change the narrative and reach the masses with our Da’wah Bi’ithnillaah.