"My name is Hind bint 'Utba. You killed my father. Prepare to die."
It's election year in America, a time when our public discussions center on power and who ought to wield it. The big struggle is less over specific legislative agendas and more over who controls the narrative and frames the issues. Is the key term progress? Tradition? Freedom? Who represents its authentic voice? In polarizing debates and campaign rhetoric, legitimate differences of opinion become the occasion for demonization of opponents. An undercurrent of fear stokes the accusations hurled back and forth. Some explicitly assert that "our" way of life is threatened.
This is a powerful motivating idea. It was also, according to Mustafa Akkad's 1977 movie "The Message," the reason for early Meccan opposition to Islam. The film tells the story of the Prophet Muhammad's career, from the first revelation in 610 to the conquest of Mecca 20 years later. Filmed in English and Arabic (with separate casts) it has been translated into many languages, and is shown worldwide during Ramadan. Its soundtrack has become iconic, and the movie itself is now a beloved classic, though it was originally somewhat controversial.
Akkad, who also directed the "Halloween" films, sought to ward off objections by choosing not to show the Prophet's face or voice. Moreover, to avoid offending sensibilities -- or seeming to favor Sunni or Shiite views -- neither Abu Bakr nor Ali appears, 'Umar and 'Uthman are absent, and the Prophet's wives and daughters are likewise missing. Leaving out these major players leaves a gaping hole in the conventional story. Akkad fills it with Mecca's pagan power couple, implacable opponents of the Prophet and his followers: Abu Sufyan and Hind bint 'Utba.
Abu Sufyan and Hind lead Meccan elite opposition to the new monotheism not because it threatens their theology but because it threatens their livelihood (they make money from the Kaaba's idols) and their way of life. In Akkad's vision, Islam threatens the entrenched social order, promising racial equality, liberation of women and economic justice. But it also tears apart families. Sons disobey fathers and turn toward a community of faith instead. The stakes become increasingly personal: Hind's brother and father perish in clashes with Muslims.
Apart from one martyred convert who gets a few minutes of screen time, Hind is the movie's only real female character. Though she's one of the bad guys, she is not a caricature. She has range and depth and a little bit of crazy. Like Inigo Montoya in "The Princess Bride," Hind's personal loss makes her obsessed with vengeance against the Prophet's uncle Hamza, the man who slew her father. Hind's quest for retaliation eventually finds to her crouched over Hamza's corpse -- she paid a mercenary slave to kill him -- ripping out his liver to dine on it. (The liver was thought to be the seat of emotions; the parallel today would be ripping out someone's heart.)
Hind is central in "The Message" though she appears only a few times in classical Muslim accounts of early Islam, apart from her battlefield declamation over the slain Hamza. (Her temperament is not sweetened after she accepts Islam: When she takes the oath of loyalty, where the Prophet asks that the Meccan women swear not kill their children, she retorts, referring to a battle where many Meccans died, "Have you left us any after Badr?")
Hind and Abu Sufyan were late and reluctant converts, never part of Muhammad's inner circle despite his marriage to their daughter Umm Habiba prior to Mecca's conquest. (Like nearly everything associated with Muhammad's marriages, this gets left out of the film.) Their belated and grudging recognition that they were wrong is necessary to the film's triumphalist narrative, yet they are humbled but not defeated. Their son Mu'awiya became Caliph in 656. When his son Yazid succeeded him (martyring the Prophet's grandson Husayn along the way), a hereditary dynasty was born and the Meccan elite were back in power. The Message ends before this happens. Its concluding voiceover does not discuss how an upstart socio-religious movement becomes mainstream enough to wield imperial power.
Is there a lesson for attentive viewers appropriate for our current polarized political climate? A pessimistic reading of this history might suggest that status and power are not easily defeated; radical reform movements can deal setbacks but rarely death-blows to existing norms. A more hopeful interpretation, guided by Akkad's relentlessly human portrayal of Hind in particular, would suggest that enemies can become allies, and that even reluctant allies can help build a lasting, humane community. In any case, it can remind us that religion has the capacity to be the voice of the status quo or the justification of revolutionary, transformative social ethic.
I have made my own thoughts that do not always fit true words of any religion. As I live, I do not always understand words some one may speak or wright on paper. There for I drift away into my soul of thought when trying to understand history and religions.
I base my thoughts on how to interpret something I do not understand. If I was to wright something I do not fully understand or feel a reader will not understand. I will use something familiar to them or I in order to help others understand and I may wright the same thing in many ways to get the point across.
Will you use ten verses to show the light on the same topic with out letting the reader know you just used ten ways to get one idea across?
What will happen to your work when it is lost and found? What will someone re-wrights to make it more understandable for them? what will be lost in translation?
It all comes down to the Good Lord. there really is a good lord you just do not see it as good.
Man is good or they would not kill others to help other live the good life and yes, good does kill the bad and their bad deeds.
God Blessed you with pure goodness and you have no idea he even exists.
Just crazy.
Hogstwaddle. Keep your "Islam" to yourself. Don't want it, don't need it - and if your "Allah" is so weak that you have to murder folks to get them to believe in "him" - then he's too weak to be a "god".
Tax the church!
by choosing not to be enemies
maybe sharing dinner and a movie together
and having some hot snogging after
then lots of children and much happiness :3
Quran says: It may be that God will ordain love between you and those whom you hold as enemies. For God has power over all things; and God is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful. (60:7)
Its only one sentence yet it speaks deeply to about how to become peaceful with possible enemies. Most Sacred Books have similar verses.
God said, "Resemble Me; just as I repay good for evil so do you also repay good for evil." (Exodus 26:2)
Do good to him who has done you an injury. (Tao Te Ching)
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (Romans 12:21)
Peace be with you. Peace be with us all.
It that the American Quran quote 60:7 ?
Too many Muslims have forgotten that or they have not had the opportunity to learn about mercy because their governments show no mercy.
Do you mean is it the Quran in English vs. Arabic?
Gotcha....
For a non-religious example: If you try to drive to work without starting the car, and it doesn't work out, it's not the owner's manual's fault, is it?