SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This chapter will provide an analytical survey of the ways in which religion and its theological, legal, and symbolic codes inform cinematic content and aesthetics in the Arab world. It will begin with an account of the skepticism with which cinematic technology was initially received by certain religious authorities in the early twentieth century when it was first introduced, demonstrating how iconoclastic or aniconic impulses were eventually channeled into one taboo: the onscreen representation of the Prophet Muhammad. It will then move on to consider films that engage explicitly with religious themes and motifs, from hagiographies to epics about the Islamic conquests. Finally, it will consider those films that interrogate the boundaries of what is Islamically permissible in terms of form and technique. While most of the chapter is presented through the prism of Islam, some discussion of Christianity and, to a lesser extent, Judaism in Arab cinema provides a comparative framework, particularly in relation to systems of iconography.