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Michael Wolfe's new documentary on Islam is one of the few produced by Muslims from a Muslim
perspective
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The
buzz is loud and long, spread through old-fashioned word of mouth
and numerous emails between friends and colleagues around the
globe. Anticipation for Michael Wolfe and Alex Kronemer’s
forthcoming documentary, Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet is
fervent, perhaps for the very uniqueness of the subject. Few
filmmakers have turned their camera on the life of Islam’s
beloved Prophet (Peace and Blessings Be Upon Him) for the sheer
difficulty of telling his story without showing his image.
Wolfe
and Kronemer tackled that and many other challenges in their
four-year journey to tell the Prophet’s basic life story and how
his legacy has played out for American Muslims in our times. From
Jordan to Saudi Arabia to the United States, the two filmmakers
traveled physical and mental distances to present the Prophet’s
legacy as best possible. Wolfe, who is himself an American Muslim
convert, recently spoke with IslamOnline about the project, from
its birth to finish, and how it has shaped his own Muslim
identity.
(Muhammad:
Legacy of a Prophet runs is scheduled to air on more than 300
PBS affiliated stations nationwide starting Dec. 18th,
2002 without commercial interruption. The film is a co-production
of Unity Productions Foundation and Kikim Media.)
IslamOnline
(IOL): Let’s
start at the beginning: What inspired you to do this documentary?
How did you conceive the idea?
Michael
Wolfe (MW):
Alex Kronemer telephoned me in 1998 to say that we should produce
a film together. He had done reporting on the Hajj for CNN, and I
had done the same for ABC Nightline
a year earlier. We joined forces. The suggestion to make a
documentary about the Prophet Muhammad was his. We then partnered
with Kikim Media, a reputable film making company with PBS
experience, and Unity Productions (Alex’s and my company).
IOL:
What
did you envision for the documentary before you began?
MW:
Each
person had a different imagination of the film. Mine was purely
historical treatment. As time went on, I began to see the point of
including contemporary Muslims in telling the story, since the
story has a strong legacy in present times.
IOL:
Is
that same or different from how the documentary evolved?
MW:
Like
any large project, this one evolved.
IOL:
Who
is your intended audience?
MW:
Our
main audience, I hope, is two sided: One side are the millions of
educated mainstream Americans of other faiths who know little or
nothing about Muhammad and what he means to Muslims. On the other
side are Muslims themselves, who so rarely see anything positive
about Islam in the Western media. I think a film like this can be
educational for both groups.
IOL:
How
many people worked on this with you and your partner?
MW:
Several
hundred people have worked directly on this film in all its
aspects, from film crews to editors to producers and directors, to
scholars and advisors across the country.
IOL:
What
will the documentary cover?
MW:
The
biography of Muhammad, and therefore the foundational story of
Islam, and how that story has created a living legacy for Muslims
today.
IOL:
Where
have you been filming? How did you get all the countries to agree
to filming, especially filming in Makkah and Madina?
MW:
We
filmed in three countries: Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United
States. We went to Jordan to gather “traditional” footage of
Muslims and their daily lives, which is not so easy to accomplish
in Saudi Arabia where life is more private. We filmed in Saudi
Arabia during Hajj. We explained the project to the Department of
Information and they agreed to let us bring cameras for the Hajj.
In the United States we had no trouble with permissions. We filmed
in Muslim communities in Michigan, New York, Washington D.C., Los
Angeles and Chicago. All were very open to our presence and worked
with us. The cooperation was at a very high level. We are very
grateful for that.
IOL:
How
will you effectively tell the story of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)
without actors and actresses, or dramatic recreations?
MW:
We
have relied on expert storytellers filmed in up close interviews.
And we have drawn on a huge supply of Islamic art as well as a lot
of footage of traditional Muslim life juxtaposed with contemporary
footage. It worked, but it wasn’t easy. Telling the story of a
man you can’t show on camera is challenging, to say the very
least.
IOL:
I
hear there are a lot of interviews with scholars in the
documentary – can you give some names? How did you know whom to
interview, given that there are various schools of thought in
Islam.
MW:
We
mainly interviewed historians, because we were always trying to
tell the story of Muhammad, his times and his region. We wanted a
strong mix of Muslim speakers on camera, but we also wanted some
people of other faiths too. Our audience will be composed of a
mixture of faiths, and we wanted people who were eloquent about
Muhammad and able to address this story from different points of
view. We did not concern ourselves very much with different
schools of Muslim scholarship or practice, because in Muhammad’s
time these differences didn’t exist yet. Among our camera
scholars were Sheikh Hamza Yusuf, Karen Armstrong, M. Cherif
Basiouni, John Voll, Sayyed Hossein Nasr and Reuven Firestone.
IOL:
Will
this be an “authoritative” piece about the Prophet’s life?
Is it even possible to effectively cover his whole life?
MW:
No,
this is not an authoritative seerah. This is a television program
with all the limitations of the medium, including a need to
compress data and distill information. We keep to the historical
timeline, but many events – on occasion even very important
events – are skipped over. Two hours may seem like a long time,
but it is not much time at all when you are charged with telling
such a rich story.
IOL:
How
have you worked to ensure truth and facts? Can you give us a feel
for how you have done the research – where you’ve done it?
MW:
We relied on the most accepted seerah and hadith – that is Ibn
Ishaq, Sahih Muslim, Sahih Bukari and the most popular later
seerah chronicles, as well as the modern compilation in English by
Martin Lings, which is based on the four most reliable seerah
chronicles. I personally also read Ibn Kathir and number of
contemporary seerah authors, and so did my partner Alex Kronemer.
For accuracy, we brought our questions to a group of almost 20
scholars, both men and woman, almost all of them Muslim scattered
around the country at various universities.
IOL:
What
do you hope to achieve with the documentary?
MW:
Understanding.
IOL:
Do
you think this documentary will successfully help clear up some of
the misconceptions about the Prophet’s life and stereotypes of
Islam?
MW:
Generally,
yes.
IOL:
Are
there any specific misconceptions the documentary will address?
MW:
I
believe it addresses all the misconceptions, many of them
subconsciously. The biggest problem for Islam in America is that
most Americans don’t know who Muslims are: That they are
not very different from themselves as human beings. We show
American Muslims telling Muhammad’s story as they go about their
jobs as nurses, firefighters, lawmakers, scholars, mothers,
fathers and so on. That alone should help break some stereotypes.
That is not by any means the stated message of the film, but it is
what people will be seeing as they listen to the story.
IOL:
What
makes this documentary different from others about the Prophet’s
life?
MW:
I
don’t know much about other documentaries on Muhammad’s life.
I’m sure there are some good ones, but I’ve been so busy with
this one, I haven’t paid much attention to what’s out there.
IOL:
What
have you personally brought to this project? What kind of
expertise, or feelings and emotions?
MW:
I’m
not sure how to answer this question. I brought everything I had
to the project. I’m essentially a writer of books, and I love
reading history. For some reason I have no trouble at all reading
about things that happened many centuries ago and experiencing
them vividly. If we’d had another two years, I suspect the film
would be more vivid than it is. I hope it opens the way for others
to follow and do much better films soon.
IOL:
What
have you gained from this experience? How has it influenced your
Islamic beliefs?
MW:
I’ve learned much more about Muhammad than I ever knew before we
started, although in some sense my study of him may only have
started. There is so much to understand. I’ve also seen a lot
more of the American Muslim community during the making of this
film. I have a much better feeling for who Muslims are and how we
are doing here. It’s a real eye opener and, for an American born
here, it is a very exhilarating thing to have direct access to
people from so many different places, language groups and
perspectives. It’s one of the treasures of being a Muslim.
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