Movie Review: The Messenger

Bismillah ir-rahman ir-rahim

Assalaam alaikum

Subhanallah, I found a wonderful film on you tube today and I JUST finished watching it. It is called The Messenger. It is made by an Iraqi film maker and it is about Prophet Ibrahim (AS) (Abraham), yes, the very same from the Bible. As it is made by Muslims and based on the Qur'an, it focuses on Ibrahim (AS) and Ismael (AS), but not his other son so much.

The movie starts when Ibrahim (AS) is first getting some inkling that the stone idols he has been making all his life are not actually divine. After all, by the admission of those who worship them, they cannot eat, they cannot hear, they cannot talk, they cannot see. But, good prophet he was, Ibrahim (AS) insists on stirring up some trouble.

This pretty much gets him kicked out of Babylon. The king gets a little frustrated with him. From there, it follows the story from his leaving Babylon to when he and his eldest son, Ismael (AS), build the ka'aba (see right).

It is by no means your average Western action-packed, fast-paced thrilling story. It is slow-moving with scenes lasting longer than 60 seconds (studies have shown that in North America when scenes last more than60 seconds, movies tend to lose ratings... yikes). But, mashallah, it is a beautiful story. When Ibrahim (AS) tells Ismael (AS) that he must be sacrificed, Ismael's (AS) reaction makes me go all teary-eyed.

It is an incredible story about an incredible prophet. One of the things, though, that I found that made it a good movie rather than an average movie was the use of Shaitan (Satan) as a character. He wasn't around all the time, and he didn't look completely freaky or anything, but his presence was definitely somewhat disconcerting.

Anyhow, I highly recommend you watch it. If you click here (click me!) you can watch the whole thing. It is broken up into digestable 10-minute segments, so you can easily take breaks and come back to it later. But please watch it. It is actually quite touching.