I made the film to bring the story of Islam, the story of 700 million of people, to the West.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
If I had simply wanted to trade on an insult to Islam, I could have done it in a sentence rather than writing a 250,000-word novel, a work of fiction.
The most important film I made, in terms of its subject and the great responsibility I had as an actor, was a film I did about the founder of Pakistan called 'Jinnah.'
I brought the film like a flower to the world.
But when I reintroduced the Nation of Islam, and began to host meetings in cities and thousands and thousands of people come out.
On 'Black Hawk Down,' I was employing 1,000 Muslims. 'Kingdom of Heaven,' same deal except bigger, probably 1,500 Muslims.
Beside all this I think there was something personal, being Muslim myself who lived in the west I felt that it was my obligation my duty to tell the truth about Islam. It is a religion that has a 700 million following, yet it's so little known about it which surprised me.
My films often have a spiritual dimension which comes from my Muslim background, and I'm happy to tackle that in cinema.
Years later I made a movie with Wayne Newton, who has Arabians.
This is one of the factors that also made me very much want to make this film, apart from the fact that I loved it. If the boy hadn't been Jewish and the man hadn't been Muslim, it wouldn't have made any difference to the film. I don't think it's relevant, really.
All I wanted with that film was to represent the possibility that there might be normal people who are Muslim or Arab with the same fears, responsibilities, hopes.