I posted about the 1977 Hanafi Muslim hostage-taking in Washington DC, in response to a post by John Leo, about this incident as a foreshadowing of the cartoon controversy. (I added some detail about their takeover of B'nai Brith Headquarters.)
One of the Hanafis' demands was that a film about the life of Mohammed not be released, in spite of the fact that a depiction of Mohammed was never shown.The director, Moustapha Akkad, a Syrian-born Muslim, shot around the role of Muhammad, sometimes showing scenes from Muhammad's point of view, a technique familiar from Akkad's stalker-and-slasher movies.Robert Schwartz points out in a comment to my post:Despite these precautions, many Muslims were irate, particularly because rumors that [Anthony] Quinn would appear as Muhammad proved unstoppable. [Quinn played Mohammed's uncle.] . . .
Later, a group of black American Muslims attacked three buildings in Washington, D.C., taking 149 hostages. One of their demands was that The Message must not be released. In a 39-hour siege, a reporter was killed and many hostages were stabbed, beaten, or shot.
The man who produced the movie "The Messenger," Moustapha Akkad, latter went on to be the producer of the "Halloween" series. On 11/11/2005, Moustapha Akkad died when a suicide bomber attacked the wedding of his son at a hotel in Amman Jordan. Al Qaeda did not claim any connection between that attack and "The Messenger." But it is pretty darn spooky, and puts all of his "horror" movies in perspective.Somehow I don't think this is a coincidence. The Satanic Verses was published in 1988.
By 1993, Rushdie's Italian translator had been beaten and stabbed in Milan, his Norwegian translator was shot outside his home in Olso, and Rushdie's translator in Japan had been stabbed to death at the university where he taught, north of Tokyo.While googling about the fate of Rushdie's translators, I found this article written on the 10th anniversary of the fatwa against Rushdie, listing acts of censorship, death threats against, and assassinations of writers who criticize Islam. Including some you probably haven't heard of. It was written in 1999. And it is prescient:
Rather than face down Iran, the Western powers have turned their backs on the persecuted. Less than a year after the fatwa, Britain resumed diplomatic relations with the Khomeini government, its period of righteous indignation evidently having expired. For our part, American trade with Iran, whose leaders are fond of branding us "the Great Satan," has increased dramatically over the last 10 years, the period of Rushdie's captivity. Realpolitik may be the order of the day, but when President Clinton received Rushdie at the White House on November 24, 1993, it took him only a few days to begin loudly explaining that he "meant no disrespect" to the Muslim world, and that he only saw the author "for a few minutes."That disgusting spectacle promised little hope that the leader of the free world would actually, for once, stand up for free expression, that we would not allow the threats of petty tyrants to influence our daily lives. If that is so, then Rushdie will likely spend the rest of his days in the hell of a closed room, a fate to which he seems resigned. As he has said, "To live, to avoid assassination, is a greater victory than to be murdered."
But merely to live is not enough. It is no victory to walk free in a world where words can mean death, where a novel can shake a religion to the core, where orthodoxies of all stripes hurry to crush even the slightest whisper of dissent. Salman Rushdie's prison is the world's. We all have a stake in his release.
I think Mustapha Akkad was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was in Amman with his daughter to attend a wedding, staying at one of the handful of 5-star hotels, most of which were bombed.
He was a frequent traveler to Syria--where he still has family in Aleppo--and would have been much easier to pick off there.
One could speculate numerous reasons why he might have been intentionally targeted--his daughter's American, he had a Green Card (perhaps he'd gained full citizenship since I knew him), he's clearly "one of those" bad Muslims who profits from semi-naked women in films. And yes, he did a bioflick of Mohammed.
But he also did "Lion of the Desert," one of the most acclaimed films made by an Arab for Arabs. That fill extolls Omar Mukhtar, who made life hell for the invading Italian army in the 1920s.
His death was one of those accidents of history.
John: It looks like an accident, and A-Q did not make a claim about it, but ... .
BTW: the date may have been 11/9, not that it makes much difference.
I think the real irony lies in the use of the film as an "evangelizing" tool by the Islamic Community in prisons.
Robert, the attack was mostly likely tied to 9/11 (Semitic languages have a lot of fun with transpositions, after all). I wonder what was the date of the wedding he and his daugther were attending.
The film's not in the least extremist. It's rather boring by contemporary standards, but it's a basic retelling of the generally accepted bio of Mohammed.
Get it from Netflix and see for yourself.
his Norwegian translator was shot outside his home in Olso
Not to nitpick, but it was his Norwegian editor, William Nygaard, that was shot. He survived. The would-be killer was tracked to the Iranian embassy in Oslo.