Muhammad inspired Michael Myers?

Michael Myers in "Halloween"

Muhammad in a mosque

 

One of the greatest horror films ever made was “Halloween,” which was produced by Syrian-born Moustapha Akkad in 1978.  The film was so thrilling that Roger Ebert proclaimed “I would compare it to Psycho.”

Apart from producing the Halloween series, Akkad is perhaps most famous for directing “The Message”—the sword and sand “epic” glorifying the life and conquests of Muhammad.  “The Message” was released just two years prior to “Halloween.”  It seems a rather dramatic change in focus—does it not?—to be making a religious biography one year and a gory slasher flick shortly thereafter?  But there is more continuity between the two movies than meets the eye.

First person camera

There are a few famous films in history, such as “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” that have used the viewpoint of the camera to simulate the viewpoint of a character in the movie.  Two of the other best known films to employ that technique are—you guessed it—“The Message” and “Halloween.”

More often than not, arch-villain Michael Myers is depicted either by the camera or in the shadows, at a distance, and only in a mask.  Like our beloved Prophet, you never see his face.  The production of “The Message” was interrupted, protested, and boycotted on many occasions over rumors that an actor would portray Muhammad on screen.  If Moustapha Akkad ever desired to show the face of Muhammad, the death threats convinced him otherwise.  Akkad decided to use first-person camera and only portrayed Muhammad’s more distant relatives and companions to avoid the controversy of showing Muhammad’s inner circle.

Anti-Israel play debuts in Atlanta

“Tennis in Nablus,” a new play that opened this weekend at Atlanta’s Alliance Theater, celebrates the Arab revolt against Britain and Zionists in late 1930s Palestine.

As drama, the play is successful and even enjoyable.  As politics, “Tennis in Nablus” is trashy and offensive.  I’ve written a lengthy review of the play here at TheaterReview.com (under the moniker “Terminus”).  One striking element of the play, and the most relevant for our readers, is the character of Tariq, an Arab businessman in Palestine who starts off the play as a friendly partner to British and Jewish business and political class.

But after a painful journey of wrongful imprisonment in the dungeons of the British occupying force, Tariq is radicalized into becoming a supporter of the revolt and a bankroller of Palestinian terror.  In so doing, Tariq becomes a champion of the Arab street and the hero of the play.

The anti-Israel political message of “Tennis in Nablus” is one-sided and may be upsetting for Jewish audiences.  The glib celebration of financing the Arab revolt should be equally disturbing anybody concerned about money laundering and terrorist financing.

Even when broke, thugs buy weapons

One would be tempted to believe that during a global economic recession and an Iranian budget catastrophe, that the Islamic Republic would cut back on lavish spending to develop a nuclear program.  That’s possible, but isn’t borne out by the recent history of the neighborhood.

Andrew and Patrick Cockburn’s Out of the Ashes, a political overview of Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq during the 1980s and 90s, helps illustrate the point.  Even when Saddam’s regime had no money, it forked over heaps of cash—with no questions asked—to Saddam’s nuclear scientists:

No one knows precisely how many billions of dollars where lavished on the Iraqi bomb project.  Even during the darkest years of the Iran-Iraq war, work proceeded at full speed.  The scale of the project, the creation of a network of foreign contractors, and the success with which the program was kept out of the international public eye were a monument not only to the talents of Jafr [an Iraqi nuclear scientist] and the overall director of the scheme from 1987, Saddam’s cousin and son-in-law Hussein Kamel, but also to the insouciance of the Western powers.  It was not as if the veil of secrecy surrounding the project was complete.  Even when a close U.S. ally, Saudi Arabia, agreed to help finance the Iraqi bomb program on the promise of repayment in nuclear devices, Washington took no action.  (p. 89)

The parallel today is that Iran is also disregarding its economic woes in order to support expensive weapons programs and foreign intrigue.  Nobody really knows how much money Iran is spending to arm itself, eventually to nuke Israel or threaten the West.  The Cockburns’ book is dated but its lessons are fresh.

Read my full review of Out of the Ashes on Amazon here.