Muslims in Britain have protested the release of what they call a “provocative” film depicting the daughter of the Islamic prophet Mohammed.
Around 25 mostly Muslim protesters protested silently outside the Vue cinema in Blackburn on Friday against the newly released film The Lady of Heaven, a film centered on Fatimah, daughter of the Islamic prophet Mohammed.
With the British-made film already banned in the Islamic Republic of Iran, local critics have denounced the film as “provocative”, with some fearing it could spark “Shia and Sunni tensions”.
According to a local report Lancashire TelegraphDemonstrations against the film took place at a number of locations across the UK, with a spokesman for the Blackburn protest claiming the group managed to get the Vue Cinema site to cease production following their protest.
Officials at the cinema itself, meanwhile, have declined to confirm or deny whether that is the case, although the publication notes that future screenings of the film have reportedly been removed from the venue’s website.
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Planned for its “stilted” nature and “narrative slavery” by The guard“The Lady of Heaven” was nevertheless banned by a number of Islamic countries because it is – as one critic describes – “two hours plus of the most extreme sectarian narratives of the Shiites”.
The film has also drawn accusations of racism by portraying some of its main opponents – who are considered true saints in the canons of some Islamic sects – as black.
“Quite simply, the priority of this film is to offend Sunni Muslims rather than to present a Shia Muslim understanding of this disputed period in Islamic history,” reads a Western-style review of the strip on Islamic website The Muslim Vibe .
However, it is far from the first media piece created by Western hands to have drawn the ire of the Islamic community, as a variety of diverse artistic endeavors have previously sparked mass protests and violent reprisals from Islamic extremists.
Perhaps one of the most outstanding examples in the film world is Submission, a Dutch production in which a Muslim woman is 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 eventually saw one of its main producers, Theo van Gogh, assassinated by a Dutch Moroccan extremist, who shot the filmmaker dead before slitting the man’s throat and stabbing him in the chest with a letter of protest stabbed
Witnesses to the assassination said that van Gogh was ultimately slaughtered like an animal or “cut like a tire”.
Muslim leaders demand Britain show ‘respect’ of Islam or ‘become like France’ https://t.co/wBq0muJSu3
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