The Moroccan Cinematographic Center (CCM), has banned a controversial movie about one of the daughters of Islam Prophet Muhammad, entitled ‘The Lady of Heaven’ which sparked outrage among Muslim communities across the world.
The CCM, in a statement on Saturday while banning the movie, said it acted in line with the position of the country’s Council of Ulemas, which called for a ban on the from being screened or commercialized across Morocco.
The CCM statement emphasized that the “competent services in the Kingdom are used to authorize cinematographic and audiovisual works, whether they are shot within the national territory or abroad.”
“The process is in respect to the legislative and regulatory texts governing the cinematographic sector in Morocco,” the statement noted.
On it’s part, the Moroccan Council of Ulemas condemned the content of the movie, emphasizing that the film constituted a “flagrant falsification of facts” and contains a heinous “act which cannot be accepted by Muslims.”
The controversial movie produced by foremost Moroccan filmmaker Eli King and author Yasser Al Habib, was released on June 3.
It portrays the daughter of Prophet Muhammad, Fatima al-Zharab as being a member of the Shia denomination of Islam, sparking outrage and concerns among Sunni Muslims across the world who believe the Prophet and his family were Sunnis.
Since its release, the controversial film caused widespread outrage among Muslims across the world, with the Muslim community in the United Kingdom holding nationwide protests, with 120,000 people signing petitions to have the film pulled down from cinemas, saying that its plot does not accurately portray historical events as they happened as it was racist and blasphemous.
While responding to the criticism the movie has received, the producer Malik Shlibak said that the outrage and controversy is a “massive, massive publicity for the film,” adding that he and his team “expected this from the start.”
“We’re not presenting an over-romanticised version of history. We spent a year in pre-production making sure the history is accurate.”
Shlibak expressed his acceptance of people’s freedom to criticize the film, saying that “any religious topic you tackle is going to have disagreements amongst different groups.”