A fatwa was issued against AR Rahman, an academy award recipient by Muhammad Akhtar, the chief mufti of Mumbai.
For what? For composing music for an Iranian director Majid Majidi’s film ‘Muhammad: The messenger of God’, and the laughable irony is, the chief mufti has not yet seen the movie.
The movie must be insulting Islamic sentiments and values, right? Well, the movie is a part of a trilogy that deals with the life and teachings of the prophet, and this was the first in series which talked about his childhood.
Iran, a country that has been the standard bearer in defence of Islam since the very beginning, stood with the movie and its crew, said, no insult had been committed to Islamic values. The movie was made to help people know about the prophet and broaden their understanding. The happenings around the globe have put Islam in a bad light due to the self proclaimed jihadists, and the movie was just trying to clear the misconceptions about the religion that preaches peace and non violence.
This was the movie that AR Rahman faced flak for working on. A movie that was for the benefit of the Islam, and the ‘Islamic scholars’ who claim themselves to be the protectors of their religion, failed to understand this.
AR Rahman, in a public statement made on Facebook on Monday evening wrote that he didn’t direct the movie, only composed music, and would not disclose the reason as it was personal and spiritual.
We live in a country where we have the right to practice any religion, yet there have always been people who get offended by things that were never meant to hurt religious sentiments, be it movies like Oh My God, P.K, or MF Hussain’s paintings. When will the ‘protectors of religion’ realize the importance of freedom and right of speech and expression? If they are the ones who believe in God, they must leave the work of punishing the ones who they call ‘blasphemous and infidels’ to God.
AR Rahman also quotes a line from the Qur’an which goes as follows “Nothing shall ever happen to us except when Allah has ordained for us. He is our mawla (protector). And in Allah let the believers put their trust.”
The world has made religion an act of mockery, almost everything one does somehow manages to offend another. But the truth is, all religions preach only one common thing – peace, and it seems people are following everything that their religion tells them to, except the most crucial one – peace. This is blasphemy, working on movies that simply portray a religious character’s life in good light on the screen is not.
And this cycle of ‘my religious sentiments are hurt’ does not seem to be ending in the near future, because this is what the future of our nation, the children, are absorbing from their environment. It starts right when a Hindu mother tells her kid, “don’t play with Afzal” and it never ends.
Rahman ends his message with this line “Let us set precedent in clearing conflict with grace and dignity and not trigger violence in words or actions.”
This is what Saeed Noori, Cheif of Raza Academy, a group of Sunni Muslims said:
“We are against the title. People may use it in a bad manner if they don’t like the film, which will mean an insult to the Prophet. The actors have charged money to act in the film and they may have a dubious character in real life. How can we Muslims allow such things to happen?” (Source – The Hindu)
One can argue with enlightened people, but not with those who do not believe in reason or argument. So here’s the thing Mr. AR Rahman, feel honored and proud to offend them.
