The Lady Of Heaven producer blasts Muslim protesters and accuses ‘mob’ of ‘poisonous rhetoric

The producer of a controversial Islamic film branded ‘blasphemous’ by furious Muslims protesting outside cinemas has told critics to ‘take their heads out of the clouds’.

Showcase yesterday became the second silver screen chain to pull The Lady of Heaven, a film about the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad, from its venues following an outcry from demonstrators.

The movie has come under fire for depicting Prophet Muhammad and his daughter Fatima, with most schools of Islam banning any depiction as they believe it to be against the spirit of the religion, disrespectful and encouraging of the worship of idols.

The Lady of Heaven has also been accused of inciting hatred between different sects in Islam. 

But in a heated discussion with Roshan Salih, editor of Muslim media platform  5Pillars, on Newsnight, executive producer Malik Shilbak hit back.

He said: ‘I think Roshan and others like him need to take their heads out of the clouds, the world doesn’t revolve around them. 

‘Islam is a very complex religion with various interpretations across the world. Hundreds of millions of Muslims agree with what’s in the film and believe in what’s in the film.

‘There are people across the world who are okay with depicting the Prophet, it’s just Roshan’s mob who don’t – they’ve bullied the world to believe that’s the only viewpoint, which isn’t the case.’

It comes as a government adviser has also warned that appeasing ‘religious mobs’ risks undermining social cohesion.

Dame Sara Khan slammed politicians for not standing up to the protests which have seen screenings axed, describing the situation as a ‘dangerous slippery slope’.

Such failures could then potentially lead to anybody taking offence to an issue trying to cancel a range of lawful activities through the use of ‘intimidation and fear’, the Telegraph reports her saying.

Muslims protest outside Westfield Stratford’s Vue cinema over The Lady of Heaven

Cineworld has said it has cancelled all showings of the film nationwide ‘to ensure the safety of our staff and customers’. Pictured: A crowd of protesters gathered outside the Cineworld in Birmingham on Sunday, June 5, to protest the film’s release

Dame Sara Khan slammed politicians for not standing up to the protests which have seen screenings axed, describing the situation as a ‘dangerous slippery slope’

Mr Salih, who Mr Shilbak was responding to, is editor of 5Pillars, a controversial website funded by an organisation linked to Britain’s only state-approved press regulator.

It recently faced calls to repay a £3,000 grant after it posted a homophobic video online, while it has also published conspiracy theories about terror attacks, including an article suggesting MI5 may have arranged the murder of British soldier Lee Rigby in 2013.

He had earlier claimed: ‘There’s no such thing as unbridled freedom of speech in this country – we’ve seen that by the banning of Russian TV channels in the last few months. 

‘You can’t be openly homophobic or anti-Semitic or racist so you shouldn’t be openly Islamophobic as well. There’s a real danger of sectarian violence in this country and this film could very well provoke that.’

He added: ‘All [Mr Shilbak] does is provoke Sunnis because he’s a juvenile extremist, he’s the Shia Tommy Robinson.’

Shahid Ali, a cleric who organised one of the protests was also critical.

He told Sky News: ‘Our reservations primarily are the false narrative of the early caliphs of Islam, the closest companions of the Prophet Muhammad, of them being terrorists.

‘These figures are revered throughout the whole Muslim world by the vast majority of two billion Muslims across the globe.

‘If they are portrayed in this divisive and inflammatory and inciting movie as terrorists – and then Muslims who naturally love and revere these figures who are our founding figures of our religion – this creates an impression in the viewer, especially those who have little or minimal knowledge of Islam, that the central figures are indeed terrorists and all Muslims who revere them and honour them are similar.

‘So this is an extremely dangerous and sectarian narrative which is very extreme.’

Meanwhile, another of the film’s producers, Hussein Ashmere, told LBC the recent uproar has in fact given the film ‘a huge push’ and ‘a huge tailwind’.

He went on to explain that there hasn’t been such a response in any other country the film has been released: ‘The UK wasn’t its first release.

‘It’s been released in the US, it’s been released in Canada, in Europe, but no such reaction apart from what we found here in the UK.’

Cinemas have seen protests from Muslims claiming the film The Lady of Heaven is ‘blasphemous’. Pictured: Birmingham

Some cinemas made the decision to pull the film from theatres following the backlash. Pictured: Cineworld in Birmingham

It comes after Health Secretary Sajid Javid weighed in on the controversy and said the cancellations were ‘an incredibly dangerous road to go down’. 

Made in Britain for £12million, the film opens with the invasion of Iraq by ISIS and features a graphic jihadist murder, before telling the story of Lady Fatima, one of the daughters of the founder of Islam.

Islamic tradition forbids the direct portrayal of religious figures, with previous depictions of prophets leading to protests and even murders amid accusations of blasphemy. 

Director Eli King depicts Fatima as a faceless character, shrouded by a black veil to avoid doing this.

But protesters have accused the filmmakers of inaccurately depicting religious history and negatively portraying three of Islam’s most important figures.

A video from the weekend appears to show a manager at one cinema addressing a crowd confirming the film has been pulled, prompting cries of ‘Allahu Akbar’. 

The film features former Coronation Street actor Ray Fearon and was shown at the Cannes Film Festival last year, but was only released in the UK for the first time on June 3, this year.  

John Stephenson, who directed the 1999 film Animal Farm and 2004 movie Five Children and It, acted as a creative consultant.

And other critics have expressed anger that the negative characters were portrayed by black actors, rather than white, which they say ‘stems from the racial bias against darker skinned people’.