Muslims in Britain have protested the release of what they called a “provocative” film, which depicts the daughter of the Islamic prophet Mohammed.
Around 25 mainly Muslim protesters turned out for a silent protest in front of the Vue Cinema in Blackburn on Friday to demonstrate against the newly released “The Lady of Heaven”, a film which centres around Fatimah, the daughter of the Islamic prophet Mohammed.
With the British-made film already being banned in the Islamic Republic of Iran, critics more locally have denounced the movie as being “provocative”, with some fearing that it could inflame “Shia and Sunni tensions”.
According to a report by the local Lancashire Telegraph, demonstrations against the film took place in a number of locations across Britain, with a spokesman for the Blackburn protest claiming that the group managed to get the Vue Cinema location to pull the production after their protest.
Officials from the cinema itself meanwhile have refused to confirm or deny whether this is the case, though the publication notes that future showings of the film have been reportedly stripped from the location’s website.
Slated for its “stilted” nature and “narrative slavishness” by The Guardian, “The Lady of Heaven” has nevertheless received bans from a number of Islamic countries over it being — as one critic describes — “two hours plus of the most extreme Shia sectarian narratives”.
The film has also garnered accusations of racism by depicting some of its main antagonists — who are considered veritable saints in the canons of some Islamic sects — as black.
“Quite simply, this film’s priority is to offend Sunni Muslims more than it is to depict a Shia Muslim understanding of this contentious period of Islamic history,” read one review of the flick by the western-style Islamic website “The Muslim Vibe”.
It is far from the first media piece made by western hands to earn the ire of the Islamic community, however, with a variety of different artistic endeavours having previously resulted in mass protests and violent reprisals from Islamic extremists.
Perhaps one of the most salient examples in the film world is that of “Submission“, a Dutch production depicting a Muslim woman being forced into an arranged marriage with an abusive man, before being raped and then accused of adultery.
Denounced by critics for insulting Islam, the film ultimately saw one of its main producers, Theo van Gogh, murdered by a Dutch Moroccan extremist who shot the filmmaker, before slitting the man’s throat and sticking a letter of protest into his chest with a knife.
Witnesses to the assassination said that van Gogh was ultimately slaughtered like an animal, or “cut like a tire”.
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