‘The Message’ producer Akkad succumbs to bombing injuries

AMMAN—One of the few Arabs to make it in Hollywood, Syrian director and producer Mustafa Akkad, has died of injuries sustained in the suicide attacks on hotels in the Jordanian capital, a family friend said.
Akkad, 68, best-known for producing the ‘Halloween’ series of horror movies, had been wounded in the neck in Wednesday’s attack on the Grand Hyatt hotel that also killed his 33-year-old daughter Rima. He is best known for his 1977 Oscar-nominated epic “The Message: The Story of Islam”, starring Anthony Quinn and Irene Papas.
His death on Friday brought to 57 the number of people killed in the suicide bombings that targeted three Amman hotels and were claimed by Al-Qaeda’s Iraq branch headed by Jordanian extremist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
According to movie website IMDB.com, Akkad left home at 19 to go and study film in California. His son, Malek, is also a Hollywood producer.
Akkad directed another film about the Arab world, the epic “Lion of the Desert” in 1980, reportedly funded by Libyan leader Moamer Khadafi to the tune of 35 million dollars.
Akkad had in the past lambasted Hollywood for its perceived stereotyping of Arabs as terrorists. “We cannot say there are no Arab and no Muslim terrorists,” Akkad said in an interview with the New York Times in 1998. “Of course there are.
“But at the same time, balance it with the image of the normal human being, the Arab-American, the family man,” he said. “The lack of anyone showing the other side makes it stand out that in Hollywood, Muslims are only terrorists”.—Agencies