The shameful censorship of The Lady of Heaven

The Lady of Heaven is a new historical epic, portraying the life of Fatima, a child of the Prophet Muhammad. Yasser Al-Habib, the Shia Muslim cleric who wrote the screenplay, claims the film ‘conveys a message of love and peace’.

Not all agree, it seems. Since the film’s release on Friday, groups of Muslim protesters across England have been protesting outside cinemas, claiming The Lady of Heaven hurts ‘the feelings and the sentiments of a billion people around the world’. Now, citing the protests, Cineworld has pulled the film from all of its cinemas nationwide, while Vue has pulled it from some of its branches. This is a shocking, illiberal and profoundly worrying development.

The protesters claim to be outraged, above all, by the fact that the film depicts Muhammad on screen (using computer-generated imagery rather than a single actor). This, they say, is ‘forbidden’ by Islamic law.

[…] In a nominally free, democratic and tolerant society like ours, being offended by a film should never be a justification for its censorship or cancellation. But as we’ve seen all too often recently, freedom and tolerance are all too often trumped by a supposed ‘right not to be offended’. Our institutions are quick to cave in to intolerant mobs whenever they claim that their feelings have been hurt by this or that film or artwork. Those who have been protesting against The Lady of Heaven, in places like Bradford, Sheffield and Bolton, know this. In one video posted online, a protester at a Cineworld in Bradford can be seen declaring, ‘We have a right not to be insulted’.

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