Documentarians Hope to Enlighten Americans about Prophet

Wednesday (December 18, 2002), on more than 300 PBS television stations around the country, the two-hour ’’Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet’’ will be broadcast to millions of viewers. It’s an event: The first U.S.-made, historical documentary on the man, born nearly 1,400 years ago, whose example and teachings inspire more than a billion people worldwide, including millions in the United States.

Conceived by two American converts to Islam, one from Santa Cruz, ’’Muhammad’’ is aimed at a skeptical, post-Sept. 11 audience. Produced by an interfaith, San Carlos-based team of writers, editors and documentarians, and with San Francisco’s KQED as its sponsoring station nationwide, the show is more broadly directed at millions of Americans who may never have heard the story of one of history’s most influential figures, the prophet Muhammad.

’’The story of Muhammad is central to the practice of real, everyday Islam, and yet even well-educated non-Muslims have never even heard it,’’ said Michael Wolfe, a Santa Cruz writer and one of the two Muslims who conceived and co-produced the show. ’’This was a chance to put a new piece of history in front of an American audience that needs to know more about Islam in the times we live in now.’’

Fifteen months after the Sept. 11 attacks, at a time when one in five people on the planet is a Muslim, there are global implications to knowing -- or not knowing -- the story of the prophet, one that’s been handed down among Muslims for 1,400 years. Coming just weeks after the Rev. Jerry Falwell labeled Muhammad a ’’terrorist,’’ the program provides a more balanced explanation of Muhammad’s prophetic message of justice and mercy, without shrinking from just how complex an individual he was.

For Muhammad was ’’merchant, husband, father, statesman, and warrior,’’ the program notes, an intellectual and spiritual model whose life and words were so well documented that Muslims to this day try to follow his instructions on everything from drinking a glass of water to praying to parenting to fighting a war in accord with ethical guidelines.

At a time when many Americans may simply view Islam as a religion of the sword, the show’s creators say they hope to present a much-needed corrective: ’’We happen to be finishing this at a moment in history when the perceived need for this type of programming has skyrocketed to a point none of us could have imagined when we began,’’ said Michael Schwarz, the show’s executive director.

Surprises in Islam

A ’’nice Jewish boy,’’ he jokes, Schwarz was constantly surprised by what he learned about Muhammad; for instance, that Muhammad venerated Moses, Jesus, and all the monotheistic prophets, and required his followers to do the same. ’’So many of us know so little about Islam,’’ he said, ’’that once you begin to learn about it, it’s full of surprises.’’

Schwarz is married to Kiki Kaur Kapany, a Sikh. Kapany is co-owner of their San Carlos company, Kikim Media, and the program’s production manager. Raised in a devout Sikh home in Woodside, Kapany visited India as a girl, always had Muslim acquaintances there, and has high hopes that the film will be a bridge builder: ’’If you open up one religion to people, all the religions start opening,’’ she said. ’’People’s minds start changing. They start thinking more broadly.’’.

The producers of the documentary, four years in the making, faced interesting challenges: There are no reliable images of Muhammad because the prophet opposed idolatry and didn’t want to become an object of worship. How then, to make a documentary with human faces? By filming Muslims today, the producers decided. But this raised another hurdle: the non-Muslim members of the production team were not allowed to set foot in Mecca, a city reserved for Muslims alone, where millions of pilgrims in traditional dress would give the filmmakers the powerful imagery they needed.

Schwarz, a veteran documentary filmmaker of other PBS shows, led a camera crew to Dearborn, Mich., where there is a large Muslim population. But it was Wolfe, a poet by trade, who wound up accompanying an entirely Muslim film crew to Mecca, along with writer Alex Kronemer, the other Muslim who co-produced the show.

Theologians consulted

Throughout the production, Wolfe, Schwarz and Kronemer enlisted a bevy of theologians, both Muslims and non-Muslims, along with other experts on Islamic scripture and law to explain the story of Muhammad, beginning with his birth in Mecca in 570. The show proceeds through the critical events in his life: Orphaned as a young boy, Muhammad grew up in a powerful tribe, the Quraysh, and became an agent for wealthy merchants in the Arabian crossroads. His travels exposed him to different cultures, including those of Jews and Christians, and their sacred texts.

Married at 25 to Khadija, a wealthy businesswoman, he became a father and, at 40, a critic of an emerging economic system that disenfranchised the poor. On a meditative retreat in the mountains, he is said to have heard the angel Gabriel tell him to ’’recite’’ the first verses of the Koran, Islam’s sacred book. At first, he feared he was possessed, but eventually began to preach the new faith.

In the next 10 years, Muhammad endured persecution by the Meccan elite, culminating in an assassination attempt. In 622, he fled Mecca to the northern oasis of Medina with a fledgling Muslim community.

Numerous times, he led the Muslims in battle, and eventually retook Mecca, peacefully, in 630, establishing it as the spiritual seat of what is now among the world’s fastest growing religions.

Muhammmad’s was a ’’roller coaster of a life,’’ said Schwarz, a ’’great story’’ that viewers should cling to.

Still, the producers decided it wasn’t enough just to tell the story of the prophet. They also proposed to interweave the tales of Muhammad with thematically related footage of American Muslims who model themselves on his teaching and example. Glen Ebesu, the film’s supervising editor, said he was inspired to structure ’’Muhammad’’ in this way by ’’The Godfather II,’’ which uses a similar device to flip back and forth between stories across time.

After telling the story of Muhammad’s flight to Medina, the camera moves to Dearborn, where Imam Hassan AlQazwini, a Muslim cleric who fled Iraq for the United States, likens his own hijra, or flight, to the prophet’s. Similarly, when the documentary describes Muhammad’s final sermon, filled with dignity and some uncertainty about what he had accomplished in life, the camera again moves to Dearborn. There a nurse, Najah Bazzy, talks about the dignity of the elderly and the care she gives them: ’’When I’m stroking a head or I’m speaking softly, I’m speaking the things I think the prophet would say, to be a helper . . . a listener . . . a comforter.’’

If this sounds a little gooey to some Westerners -- a parade of Muslims who lead exemplary lives based on the life of the prophet -- so be it, said Wolfe. Americans need to know that Muslims draw inspiration from Muhammad much as Christians draw inspiration from the lives of Jesus or St. Francis.

No sugar-coating

The show doesn’t avoid problematic issues. Wolfe expects to be ’’juggling several flaming balls on Dec. 19,’’ the day after the broadcast, he said. This is partly because some Muslims will feel the program should not have mentioned Muhammad’s military exploits or his relationship with a few of the many Jewish clans of Medina, which on one occasion resulted in the slaughter of 700 Jewish men said to have broken a treaty with the prophet. ’’It’s not possible to steer clear’’ of controversy, Wolfe said.

This is doubly true for the Sept. 11 attacks which, ironically, became the catalyst for increased PBS interest in the production. It also wasn’t until after Sept. 11 that corporate and foundation funding for the $2.5 million project fell into place.

The film includes images of the Sept. 11 aftermath: A New York City firefighter named Kevin James, a convert to Islam, walks through the wreckage and denounces Muslim ’’fanatics who have lost sight of what the purpose of religion is.’’

Still, ’’Muhammad’’ doesn’t dwell on the hot-button issues surrounding Islam. Those matters are better dealt with, Wolfe and Schwarz said, by another PBS documentary called ’’Muslims,’’ which will air next Thursday. The producers of both shows have joined in an educational effort called ’’The Islam Project,’’ which is already spawning community discussion groups around the country on Islam and what it has to say about such things as violence and the role of women.

The public is so inundated with disturbing reports about Muslim fundamentalists and extremists -- rioting over a beauty pageant in Nigeria or blowing up tourists in Bali -- that Wolfe and Schwarz feel it’s time for some images that demonstrate the peaceful Muslim mainstream, the millions of people living normal lives.

After Sept. 11, Schwarz and Kapany said they felt good sending their children to school where they were ’’able to tell the other kids about the religion of Islam,’’ Kapany said. ’’I think that’s really important for children to embrace the idea that there aren’t just Muslim terrorists, that there are Muslims, people who live and are around the community, and they’re a respectable, good people.’’

Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet
Aired on PBS at 9 p.m. Wednesday