The Message (R-Risalah) movie has a scene from the battle of Badr. There, before the battle, Muslims were seen drawing water from a well. According to the famous Libyan tourist Osama Thini, this is the well. The site is in the Sahara Desert, near the southern Libyan city of Obari.
Even before the creation of The Massage, Syrian-American director Mustafa Akkad had every page of the screenplay screened by the authorities of Al-Azhar University in Egypt. Al-Azhar's authorities allowed the film to be made because it did not find anything in conflict with Islam in the film's story and imagery.
Al-Azhar, however, allowed Saudi Arabia to oppose the Muslim World League. Mustafa Akkad wanted to shoot the film in and around Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia. But without King Faisal's permission, he was forced to look for an alternative location. With financial support from Kuwait and Morocco, he began work on the film in 1984 in Marrakesh, Morocco. It only took him four and a half months to build the set of the seventh-century cities of Mecca and Medina!
When Mustafa Akkad first went to Libya to raise money before The Massage began, he was not allowed to enter. He was flown back to the United States from the airport. He later started making the film with financial support from Kuwait and Morocco. Al-Azhar University initially funded Morocco and Kuwait with the approval of the authorities, but Kuwait later withdrew from its position when Saudi Arabia objected.
King Hassan II of Morocco continued his support. But in the end, he too succumbed to the pressure of Saudi Arabia. After six months of shooting, Morocco stopped shooting The Massage and arrested Mustafa Akkad first and then expelled him from Morocco. Financially, the entire unit, including foreign crew, spends the day in a low-quality hotel with no air conditioning.
Seeing no way out, Akkad returned to Libya and showed Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi the scenes he had been shooting in Morocco for six months. According to People magazine, Gaddafi was overwhelmed by the scenes and cried emotionally.
He allowed Mustafa Akkad to make the rest of the film in Libya and provided the rest of the money to complete the film. Gaddafi recruited 3,000 members of the Libyan army to fight the battle for Badr. In addition to acting as extras, these soldiers also helped build movie sets. Gaddafi's government pays each of the actors in the film an additional 25 percent of their original salary in Libyan currency.
Finally, with the funding of Gaddafi and the support of the Libyan army, the film The Massage was completed after six months of shooting in the southern Libyan city of Sabah.