DIRECTED BY MOUSTAPHA AKKAD (1977)
THE PLOT Anthony Quinn plays Mohammed's uncle in an epic telling of Islam's origins.
THE CONTROVERSY The movie rankled Muslims and sparked riots, and that was just during production. Post-release, in March 1977, Hanafi terrorists took more than 100 people hostage in Washington, D.C. — killing a reporter and shooting the city's future mayor Marion Barry in the two-day siege — demanding in part that The Message be banned. (It wasn't.) In a cruelly ironic coda, the Syrian-born Akkad died amid al-Qaeda's coordinated hotel bombings last fall in Amman, Jordan.(ew.COM)