The Blue Mosque of Istanbul is just one of the seven mosques featured in 'The Seven Wonders of the Muslim World.'

Six young Muslims become the world’s windows into the Muslim world in Discovery Channel’s new documentary, “The Seven Wonders of the Muslim World”, which tracks their lives living beside some of the world’s most beautiful mosques and their maiden voyage to Mecca.

The documentary also features seven of the world’s most important mosques – Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque, Spain’s Alhambra, Istanbul’s Blue Mosque, Mali’s Great Mosque of Djenne, Iran’s Imam Mosque, Pakistan’s Badashahi Mosque and Mecca’s Grand Mosque.

The man behind the production is Faris Kermani, a British-Pakistani film director based in the UK. A graduate from the London Film School, his work consists primarily of documentaries on South Asian politics and the Muslim world.

In an exclusive interview with Students and Campuses Bulletin, Kermani talks about the difficulties of shooting at Mecca, the beauty of the world’s greatest mosques, and the journey of six young Muslims from around the world.

The Genesis

In quite a poetic twist, the genesis for “The Seven Wonders of the Muslim World” actually came about as Kermani and a television executive friend were saying their prayers.

“My friend told me that at any one time, millions of people are like me praying towards Mecca. Is there any way one could encapsulate that whole moment that at any one time, five times a day, millions of people turn themselves towards the Kaaba and say their prayers?” he relates. “Out of discussions with him, we came up with this idea of combining the beauty of the mosques with the idea of the prayer, and the whole center of concept of Mecca being the sort of focus of all this.”

However, getting that idea to take of would prove much more difficult. Aside from the logistical problems brought about by the documentary’s international scope, Kermani had to find six young Muslims who would feel confident enough to share such a personal experience such as the hadj.

“You’d be surprised that there were so many people who I approached who said no because they were not willing to open up or share their own parts on camera,” he says. “It was a question of finding people who were willing to do that. They should be articulate and put across their ideas.”

Once the people were in place, Kermani now had to deal with the unique requirements needed by each location. At one point during the production, Kermani and the crew were almost not allowed from taking shots of the Alhambra mosque in Spain.

“I spoke to the people who ran these mosques and asked the local demands of the people who were in charge of the administration on the buildings. But they wouldn’t give me access to Alhambra because they said it had no religious significance,” he recalls. “They were very reluctant that a documentary dealing with religion should be given permission to film at Alhambra. They were not at all sure this was the right thing for them to do.”

However, the most difficult thing to accomplish was still bringing all six participants to Mecca at the same time.

“The logistics of trying to get six people from different parts of the world to arrive in Saudi at the same time was the most difficult thing,” he says. “I would have liked all six to turn up in Mecca, but only four did. I couldn’t manage that.”

Stories and architecture

At the end of the shoot, Kermani says he found himself not only enamored with the mosques’ architecture – some of which date as far back as the 15th and 16th centuries – but with the stories of the six young Muslims who participated in the documentary as well.

“Some of the beauty of the architecture is on such a grand scale. You think how sophisticated the thinking must have been to be able to produce such architecture,” he explains. “But I certainly felt I shared much more than I thought I would with the people in the film. I felt quite close with them because I thought this was a unique kind of a situation to be in.”

“The Seven Wonders of the Muslim World” has already screened to positive reviews in Britain, and Kermani hopes that the documentary’s debut in Asia through the Discovery Channel will garner positive response as well.

“Making these kinds of documentaries is quite a challenge, because these are not mainstream documentaries which would be easily commissioned by editors,” he says. “It requires a lot of persuasion and whatever support once can get from anywhere in the world is greatly appreciated.”

(“The Seven Wonders of the Muslim World” premieres on Aug. 1, 10 p.m., on the Discovery Channel.)