A Mumbai-based Sunni Muslim group Raza Academy has issued a fatwa against music director A R Rahman and Iranian filmmaker Majid Majidi for their film 'Muhammad: Messenger of God', first of the trilogy on the life of Prophet Mohammad. The fatwa said Rahman and Majidi were "infidel" and their marriages "invalid".

It urges Muslims to not only reject the film but also "protest against such a film at the personal as well as legal level in order to get such people (who made this film) punished". Raza Academy, which had lodged a complained against the film to Union home minister Rajnath Singh and Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, approached Mufti Mahmood Akhtarul Qadri, the imam of Haji Alig Dargah Masjid, a couple of days ago with a question about the punishment for those who are associated with a film where a child actor plays the role of the Prophet. "It is nothing short of a crime to make a film on the Prophet, dramatizing his life and using non-Muslim actors...Making such a film is making a mockery of religion," the fatwa said.

"After we protested last week, we thought the people involved in making the film (like Majidi and Rahman) would apologize and recall this blasphemous film. Since there was no response from either of them or the Iranian government (Iran has sponsored this film), we are forced to seek fatwa. Guidance from a competent religious authority was necessary and so we approached a mufti (one who gives fatwa)," Raza Academy's general secretary Saeed Noori told TOI.