Muhammad, the Voice of God is an inviting introduction to the life of the man the angel Gabriel called to spread his message to the Arab people. The setting for the film includes wondrous, even beautiful, scenes of life and activities in the desert. Filmed by a German team from ZDF as part of the FFHS series on Muhammad, Jesus, and the Buddha, the video’s 43 minutes touch on topics like the time and place in which Muhammad lived (Mecca was making the transition from a bartering system to a society using coinage; the Arabs were still making sacrifices to stones, the sun, etc.), the five "duties" incumbent upon pious Muslims, and issues like Sufism and the "99 Beautiful Names."
One aspect of this film I liked particularly, after beautiful people and magical terrrain, was the time it devoted to Medina: "footage" from the city and an "introduction" to its transformation from before the time of the hijra of Muhammad’s followers to the multifaceted problems that occurred in the aftermath of the arrival of the city’s new inhabitants. The latter includes the wars between Mecca and Medina, and the difficult issue of the power struggle that developed between the Prophet and some of the Jewish tribes in the city.
There were but two short statements that caught my attention by their running counter to most of what I read. One entailed circumstances behind Muhammad’s first revelation in the cave on Mt. Hira, where, exhausted by his long journey, "he sits down to rest in a cave," and the second that Muhammad was surprised by his early success (in Mecca). I have always taught my students that Muhammad was surprised by his lack of success, rather than by his success, in Mecca, which was one of his reasons for attempting to find converts in Taif. After all, as the film says, the new "message" was imperiling an economic system tremendously beneficial to his family. Similarly, a number of authors suggest that Mount Hira was a frequent place of meditation for the Prophet, rather than a place he happened by after a long journey.
These two details aside, there is too much about this video that adds both good information and a wonderful barrage of real-life images that are so different from those we customarily see (even on TV and film).
review ©2003 by RSiSS and David Streight
