CAIRO -
After a struggle with illness, the Egyptian writer and scriptwriter Karam Al-Najjar departed, as his funeral took place at St. Mark's Church in Heliopolis, Cairo, and his family was scheduled for Monday, October 18, to receive condolences.
Film critic Tariq El-Shennawy mourned him on his Facebook page, saying, "We joined the jury of the Drama Festival for Human Rights for 5 years, and it was a title of honor and integrity. His triple name was Karam Wadih Al-Najjar. He wrote in the seventies the first part of the series (Muhammad Messenger of God)," Al-Najjar and the late Waheed Hamid lived in the same house for 7 years and did not know each other's religion.
Scriptwriter Medhat Al-Adl also mourned him and wrote, "I mourn with great sadness and pain the great writer Karam Al-Najjar, one of the pillars of television and cinema drama, a noble knight who got off his horse, but he will keep his works.. God have mercy on him.. Stay for God."
"Muhammad is the Messenger of God"
Karam al-Najjar is considered the first Coptic Christian writer to be interested in writing a dramatic work on the story of the Prophet Muhammad, may God bless him and grant him peace, the series "Muhammad is the Messenger of God", in addition to his series "There is no god but God". He decided to face the dire situation that society has reached. And the traditional image that presents the Islamic religion in the drama, which motivated him to write “Muhammad is the Messenger of God” when he was 23 years old.
It is not strange. The generosity of Wadih al-Najjar in a small village in Manshiyat al-Omara in the city of Mahalla al-Kubra allowed him to live among families that did not differentiate between Muslims and Christians. His father was a friend of the mayor and the rest of the Muslim families in the village as well.
When Sheikh Abu Al-Fadl decided to build a mosque, he used his father to collect donations from Christians, and during the reforms of the Mary Gerges Church, he was also the mediator in collecting Muslim donations. .
His relationship with art began early, specifically in high school, where he performed a theatrical performance with director Mustafa Al-Issawy, and for his role in the show, he won the Golden Award for Acting, which he received from the great theater at the time, Nabil Al-Alfi.
Scriptwriter Karam Al-Najjar was preoccupied in his writings with various human and societal relations (Egyptian press)
wide islamic culture
Karam Al-Najjar, who graduated from the Faculty of Law at the University of Alexandria, loved reading when he was young, and indeed it was the first book he read “The Earth” by Abdel Rahman Al-Sharqawi, which later turned into a movie directed by Youssef Chahine, which affected him a lot and made him excited to write as he felt that reading brings him closer among the peoples of the world.
He was also interested in reading the writings of Tawfiq Al-Hakim, and he felt at the time that writing carried more value than acting, and he was keen to enrich his talent with study, so he also studied jurisprudence and Islamic law, which made him carry a wide Islamic culture.
His first work was the "Frag" evening and he received 6 pounds as his first wage, but the first dramatic work presented to him was the series "Man and the Mountain" in the late sixties.
Political and social implications
Karam Al-Najjar was preoccupied in his writings with various human and societal relations as well, as well as projections of political issues, and also dealt with the relationship of the citizen to power, using simple language that reaches the audience, and among his most famous works in the drama are "Deviation", "Shams Family", "Friends" and "Shark's Goblin". And “Baba Nour”, and in the cinema he presented “The Scream” and “The Struggle of the Grandchildren”, where his dramatic and theatrical balance reached more than 50 works.
honors
In 2019, the last artistic appearance of the writer Karam Al-Najjar was during his honor by the Egyptian Catholic Center for Cinema in its 67th session, to be celebrated 3 years before his departure.