Islam on IMAX

Sultans of Science: 1000 Years of
Knowledge Rediscovered
Exhibition at the Ontario Science Centre

The Ontario Science Centre's Imax theater started screening a film called Journey to Mecca on February 6. This alone wouldn't make much of a story since Imax makes many kinds of films. In fact its roster of current films at the Science Centre includes: The Mysteries of the Great Lakes, Roving Mars and The Alps.

What is peculiar about this film is that it is not really a film on a great landscape or equally impressive architecture, or even the microscopic, but macroscopically projected Bugs! (made by the same director as Journey to Mecca) . This film is the journey of a 14th century Muslim scholar making his pilgrimage to Mecca from Morocco, overcoming all kinds of adversity along the way. This looks like a script more conducive to regular theaters, rather than the giant Imax theater with its 3-D, wrap-around walls for screens.

I wonder if the director, Jonathan Barker, is using this huge projection to overwhelm us with Muslims, Mecca and Islam in general? Here is his explanation for making the film:

[O]ur whole idea for this film...is to try to bring people together and have more understanding of one another. It's very regrettable, but in many parts of the post-9/11 world, seeing three million Muslims in one place evokes fear, and the word 'Muslim' means 'Islamic terrorist.' We want to build bridges, reduce that fear.

Concurrently, the Ontario Science Centre is hosting an exhibition entitled: Sultans of Science: 1000 Years of Knowledge Rediscovered , which started just a day before Journey to Mecca. The website for Sultans of Science says:

Sultans of Science’ is a global touring exhibition celebrating the contribution of Muslim Scholars in Science and Technology during the Golden Age of the Islamic World (700-1700 BC) and the influence their inventions and contributions has towards modern society.

Focused on increasing knowledge and understanding of these invaluable contributions, Sultans of Science has been created as a global travelling exhibition in order to enable its message to be far reaching through science centres and museums around the world.

Now, I keep hearing about the great contributions of Muslim scholars during that ephemeral Islamic Golden Age, but each time I look into this further or into the great Muslim contributions in art and design, I usually come up short. I often find that people who insist on the great Muslim Golden Age are devout liberals who want to promote a sophisticated image of Islam, as an antidote to regular news coverages of bombs and blasts. There is, in other words, an agenda to this exhibition.

As there is an agenda to John Barker's Journey to Mecca, which he himself has admitted to.

The problem is that these shows will be viewed by school-aged children, since the Science Centre is a favorite destination. Here is one more way that Islam's proponents are pushing their message, undetected, to slowly and gradually seep into our lives. Their clever strategy is also to get at the young children, whose natural curiosity will allow them to imbibe whatever "interesting" information is put in front of them, and who will be ready to spout all this propaganda at the necessary time.