The Imam Ahmed (RH) Series - To watch or not to watch?

This is a strange sort of review(ish)… Wasn’t going to pen this but I posted a status asking for some clarity a while back and didn’t really receive any. Then I started seeing some people, pages and groups speaking of the series, yet, none could really answer my central question: How much of it is fact and how much is fiction?

Now, before I begin, this is in no way a status to tell you that it is halal or haram to watch this. You’ll need to ask a Sheikh you know and trust for opinion on the permissibility of watching this. To date, I have not watched Omar (RA) series and have no plans on doing so at the moment as I feel uncomfortable on the depiction of such a great Sahabi.

So, let me start off by saying that the Imam Ahmed (RH) series is a complex web of fiction with a significant number of facts and true incidents not always depicted as history has written them.


First of all, it is unnecessarily 31 episodes. There was absolutely no need for it to be 31 episodes. The only sane reason I can think that they made it 31 episodes is to fill air time during Ramadan. Let me be honest, many of you will be watching it for the Mihna. Skip the first 17/18 episodes.

The first 17/18 episodes could easily have been condensed to 4 episodes at the most, if not 3. The series has so many irrelevant side stories that it becomes annoying at times. There was absolutely NO NEED for them to do this. The Imam’s life is filled with so many great incidents that had they concentrated on these alone, they would have content for 90+ episodes without even covering 30% of the incidents and lessons from his life.

Next, the series has one of THE WORST ending scene in the history of television. It is so bad it makes those South Indian movie scenes seem like Oscar winning performances. It is ridiculous. There was absolutely no need or rationale for them to murder the final few moments of the Imaam's life scene with such trash. It is utter laziness on part of the script-writers. Such fiction does no justice to the man you attempted to make a series on.

Next, while the series has some profound scenes, I didn’t feel they did justice to the events surrounding the Mihna. They really skipped a lot and did not show all the injustice and struggle the Imam went through. They really watered it down.

Aside from the Mihna, some of the other major events from his life were just skipped. Lazy writing. They preferred to show stupid irrelevant side stories instead.

Finally, in terms of negatives anyway, their CGI was poor! How such crazily mad CGI made it in to the final cut is beyond me. It was hilariously poor. Like CGI done on MS Paint.. 8-bit… from 1998.

So were there any positives? Ok so in terms of positives, credit where credit is due: the acting by the dudes playing Imam Ahmed (RH), Imam Shafi’i (RH) and even Haroon Ar-Rashing (RH) was very good. Props to them guys.

Also, I do think it was a good idea but badly executed at times. It is still way way better than Ertugrul in terms of fiction. There are some genuinely profound scenes, moments and quotes executed really well.

O and be ready to send plenty of la’nat on the mu’tazila.

My recommendation is for you, if you have the go-ahead for permissibility of watching it, to read up on his seerah, listen to lectures on his life and specifically the Mihna and then to watch it so that you can separate the fact from fiction.

I would love for someone to fund a re-make of this series with scholarly input. In fact a well-done series on each of the 4 imaams would be fantastic.

Note: This is a direct copy/paste of a facebook status I posted and has not been edited for a blog post as... I have no excuse really to be honest...