"For television critics, it was an "exemplary piece of programme-making" which kicked off a week of coverage of Islam. But Channel 4's The Qur'an has prompted a backlash among the global Shia community and caused deep personal offence to one of its most liberal clerics. Indeed, the Iranian Grand Ayatollah Saanei has written to the documentary's award-winning British film-maker to berate the portrayal of him and Shia Muslims as a whole. The complaint has also been passed to the media regulator, Ofcom."