Fimmaker Uncovers the Struggle of Gay Muslims in 'A Jihad for Love'

From the Los Angeles Times - July 26, 2008

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Anne Cusack/ Los Angeles Times

Parvez Sharma, director of "A Jihad for Love," addresses a crowd at the Director Guild of America headquarters. The documentary about gay and lesbian Muslims was filmed surreptitiously in 12 countries over six years.

By Duke Helfand, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

July 26, 2008

"A Jihad for Love" may not be the blockbuster movie of the season, but the new documentary about the plight of gay and lesbian Muslims is enjoying a degree of acclaim as it casts light on a subject often shrouded in mystery.

The film's gay Muslim director, Parvez Sharma, has spent the last year touring theaters and festivals around the world.

This month, he and his movie arrived in Los Angeles.

"A Jihad for Love" was the documentary centerpiece last week at Outfest, a gay and lesbian film festival. On Friday it opens at Laemmle's Sunset 5 Theatres in West Hollywood and Camelot Theatres in Palm Springs.

Filmed surreptitiously in 12 countries over six years, the movie offers a window into the distraught lives of gay and lesbian Muslims as they struggle to reconcile their sexual orientation with their devotion to a faith that condemns their way of life.

Some are beaten or imprisoned. Others are forced to flee their homelands. Several have their faces obscured in the film to protect their identities and their families from reprisals.

But Sharma, 35, a former print and broadcast journalist in India, said he did not intend to attack Islam but to open a dialogue about a dilemma that forces people to endure lives of quiet desperation.

And therein lies the meaning behind the film's title: Jihad, often equated with holy war, means "struggle" or "to strive in the path of God," Sharma said.

"I know there is a deep hunger for this film," said Sharma, who shot the movie, his first feature documentary, in Egypt, Turkey, India, South Africa, France and other countries.

"There are vast differences among Muslims on how to deal with homosexuality," he added. "For the most part, they choose to ignore it as long as it is kept private."

The problem for many of Sharma's subjects, he said, is that they refuse to keep silent or ignore their desire to love despite the risks. And that invariably leads to conflict with their faith, their families, their countries and themselves.

Consider the experience of Mazen, a twentysomething Egyptian who in the film is arrested in a raid of a gay disco and then raped in prison. He flees to Paris before a second, longer prison sentence can be imposed. Still, he maintains his faith. "I'm sure God has a reason for all that has happened to me," he says. "I know that he is always with me."

And then there is Maryam, a lesbian also living in Paris who maintains a long-distance relationship with her partner, Maha, in Cairo.

In one of their visits, Maha asks: "Why can't we be together and at the same time live with God?"

Maryam replies: "I don't know if it's possible. I don't know."

Muhsin Hendricks, an imam from South Africa, loses his position as a teacher after he reveals his homosexuality. Instead of turning bitter, however, he devotes himself to convincing fellow Muslims that the Koran has no ban on gay love -- a position rejected by an Islamic scholar with whom he meets in the film.

"We will consider you a murtad, an apostate, and out of the fold of Islam," the scholar says. "Homosexuality is a crime not only in Islam, in every divine religion, and is punishable in Islam by death."

To make "A Jihad for Love," Sharma teamed up with producer Sandi DuBowski, who made the 2001 documentary "Trembling Before G-d," which depicted the struggle of gay and lesbian Orthodox and Hasidic Jews.

Although the two films tackle similar terrain, Sharma's movie was especially difficult to make because of the dangers, including police surveillance and the threat of arrest, which he was able to avoid.

Sharma -- who wears jeans, red-rimmed glasses and a necklace with a gold pendant featuring the name of God in Arabic, "Allah" -- said he often posed as a tourist while filming, and sandwiched his interviews between innocuous footage.

"The biggest struggle was to establish relationships of trust with each of the people in the film," he said.

His movie debuted in September at the Toronto International Film Festival. Since then, it has been shown at festivals in Germany, Mexico, Brazil, India, Greece, Turkey, South Africa and England. Sharma said friends also have sneaked copies into Iran, Pakistan and Malaysia for underground screenings.

The film has generated some backlash. The government in Singapore has banned it, Sharma said, adding that the Muslim Judicial Council in South Africa has declared he and Muhsin apostates. And Sharma said he has received death threats on his blog, which otherwise features positive feedback about the film.

At last week's Outfest screening, several Muslims in the audience -- gay and straight -- said they were pleased to discover that Sharma portrayed Islam in a respectful manner.

"As a Muslim woman, I found your film incredibly beautiful and spiritually inspiring," Nagwa Ibrahim, 30, a civil rights attorney, told Sharma during a question-and-answer session.

"I was very moved by the humanity of your film," she added.

At a reception following the movie, Aryana Farshad, a documentary film producer and director originally from Iran, said she was surprised by the movie's even-handed tone.

"He had the courage to talk about homosexuality and Islam, and he did not trash the face of Islam," Farshad said. "I really felt for those kids -- they had to leave their countries because they were homosexuals."

Sharma said the perseverance of his characters and their willingness to speak openly about their struggle renewed his own commitment to Islam -- a subject he will be addressing next month when his movie is shown in San Diego, San Francisco, Berkeley, Denver, Philadelphia and other cities.

"I found deep respect for the religion . . . through these people, through their immense religiosity," he said. "I have come closer than I have ever before to deep, profound faith."

My Jihad in America and Beyond

Posted October 1, 2007

From the Huffington Post

Talking about a life left behind in Iran, my friend had tears in his eyes. But also a steely resolve that one day he would be back. He also reminded me that a Basij -- a member of the volunteer force of religious vigilantes or guardians of morality, thoughtfully supplied by the powers that are -- had openly expressed a desire to be with him and they had gone home together, not too far from Vali Asr Avenue, and spent a night of passion, the likes of which he has never had since, in each other's arms.

Given the national obsession with Hafez and his poetry, whose homoeroticism many have claimed and studied, I have always felt that the young gentleman who found passion in the park speaks to me in beautiful Farsi, almost in haiku. His language gives him the facility to always sound like he is speaking in poetry. I also assume that President Ahmadi Nejad has probably not wandered into those dark corners of Daneshju Park, a park not that different from the Rambles in the heart of New York, or Nehru Park in Delhi, where I grew up. All of these hidden spaces have been the dark and often depressing settings for so many of us seeking to meet others like us: "homosexuals," in any of the contexts we have existed in.

Continued...

Film Director Explores Homosexuality in the Muslim World

To make his film, Sharma embarked on a six-year journey to 12 countries, amassing over 400 hours of footage

From the Daily News of Egypt

Film director explores homosexuality in the Muslim world

By Jonathan Spollen
First Published: October 25, 2007

To make his film, Sharma embarked on a six-year journey to 12 countries, amassing over 400 hours of footage

CAIRO: Since 9/11 there has been heated debate over Islam’s compatibility with ‘liberal values.’ Issues such as the role of women and the freedom of Muslims to choose their religion are rarely out of the media’s spotlight. Another issue that has attracted considerable attention, and arguably most controversial of all, is that of homosexuality in Islam.

According to all commonly accepted interpretations of the Quran and Hadith, homosexuality is strictly forbidden in Islam. Sexual relations between people of the same gender have variously been referred to by Sheikhs, Imams and other Islamic experts as the result of “illness” and “the work of Satan.” In this way, Islam has much in common with Judaism and Christianity.

However, while gay and lesbian life is now open and thriving in many non-Muslim countries, it is still very much an underground phenomenon in the Muslim world. And it is this phenomenon that Indian filmmaker and journalist Parvez Sharma explores in his new film “A Jihad for Love.”

As a homosexual and self-described “devout” Muslim, the issue of homosexuality and Islam is a doubly personal one for Sharma. He had long been accustomed to encountering prejudice toward his sexuality, but living in America in the post-9/11 world, he found his faith had come under attack too.

“I was deeply aware that the Islam I always knew was certainly not the Islam that was now under attack from within and without. It was necessary when I started filming to try and correct the discourses of violence and intolerance around Islam. The subjects in this film, and indeed the filmmaker, are coming out as Muslims first, and gay or lesbian second,” Sharma told Daily News Egypt in an email interview.

By exploring homosexual life in Muslim countries and communities, Sharma’s film challenges both intolerance toward Muslims in the West by tackling a universal issue of individual liberty, as well as intolerance toward homosexuals in the Muslim world, by offering an alternative perspective on Islam.

Certainly, Parvez Sharma did not lack the energy, or the faith, for the task. By the early 1990’s he was writing about gay and lesbian issues for a national newspaper in India, evoking an “overwhelming” level of support in the process. Sharma knew the medium of film, however, would best enable him to spread his message. And picking up the camera, he believes, was something that “the Prophet Mohamed (PBUH) would approve of as an act of courage that befits a true Muslim.”

To make “A Jihad for Love,” Sharma embarked on a six-year journey, during which time he would film in 12 countries and in nine languages, amassing over 400 hours of footage. In not one of those countries — which included Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran and Egypt — did he have governmental permission to film, so he and his crew would add tourist footage onto their tapes in case they were seized by the authorities. Fortunately for him that never happened.

The resulting film depicts a reality that will scramble the preconceptions of many viewers. Sharma reveals a Saudi Arabia with a flourishing — albeit highly secretive — gay community; attitudes to homosexuality in Turkey and India that are “more open;” and in Egypt, homosexual life is possible “if you exist within the parameters of secrecy and engage in your sexual preference in ways that are not public.”



Parvez Sharma filming in Egypt


“What is important to note here is that in most Muslim communities, homosexuality is definitely tolerated unless people adopt Western personae of gay or lesbian — and this is true across the board. The problem starts happening when you decide to take on a political and social identity and construct your public persona around your sexuality.”

One scene in particular illustrates this point. A former Imam, who was forced out of his community for coming out as a homosexual, is driving in his car with his two daughters, and asks them what they would feel if he was arrested. The eldest replies that she would hope his death was quick — that he would be killed with the first stone, instead of having to suffer through a barrage.

Moreover, the identities of the majority of Sharma’s subjects were concealed for the film, and most have their faces blurred out or their figures silhouetted when they are onscreen. An Egyptian who worked as an associate producer on the film asked to have his name removed from the credits for fear of possible repercussions.

Gaining the trust of the people he worked with, in fact, was one of the greatest challenges Sharma faced while making the film, and one of the reasons it took so long to produce. He had to work with his subjects on an individual basis, and says the fact that he is “as Muslim as my subjects” was crucial in getting people to talk. “If I was a white, Western filmmaker wielding the camera, this film would certainly not have been made.”

Ultimately, Sharma hopes that his film will open up a debate within the Muslim world about the place of homosexuals within it. He holds that the Quran is the literal word of God but insists there is nothing in it that outlaws homosexuality.

“The Quran does not talk about homosexuality at all. What it talks about is the story of the fate of Qaum Lut or the Nation of Lut. That story has nothing to do with consensual homosexual relations — it is about male to male rape, and hospitality. Many Muslims understand this already and many more need to. The holy Quran does not condemn homosexuality and the Hadith of our beloved Prophet have been misinterpreted for centuries by men.”

However, most interpretations of the Quran bear testimony to the fact that Prophet Lut, the nephew of Ibrahim, was sent as a warning to the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, who initiated this “heinous practice.” Before them it was unknown. In this connection the Quran says: “We also sent Lut. He said to his people, ‘Do you commit indecency such as no people in creation (ever) committed before you? For you practice your lusts on men in preference to women; you are indeed a people transgressing beyond bounds.”

Whether Sharma will succeed in convincing fellow Muslims of his case or not, “A Jihad for Love” has already elicited a massive response — positive and negative — both where it has showed, and where it has not. A feature story about the film on Al-Arabiya’s website precipitated an avalanche of comments praising and condemning the film, and Sharma admits that he has received a number of threatening emails.

Nevertheless, his plans to take “A Jihad for Love” to audiences in the Muslim world remain undeterred. He is currently trying to get it accepted to the Cairo International Film Festival, and will also try to enter it in the Abu Dhabi and Fajr (Iran) film festivals too.

“Islam is ready for this film. I want Muslim audiences to benefit from this film because [it] was made by a fellow Muslim, with a Muslim camera and with Muslim subjects. Why should it not be shown everywhere within our Ummah? Why can we all not see it and then engage with it and learn from it instead of hurling critiques at each other.

“Allah has created gay and lesbian Muslims with the same love he has given to all of his creations and we need to understand that. No one Muslim has greater claim to Islam than another one.”

For more information visit www.ajihadforlove.com and www.ajihadforlove.blogspot.com

Muslim Movie at Gay Festival in South Africa

From the Times in South Africa - October 28, 2007


STEAM: Cory Grant and JR Rolley in A Four Letter Word, showing at the Out in Africa Gay and
Lesbian Film Festival


TOUGH LOVE: Jay Brannan as Jake, Brent Gorski as Trevor and Melissa Searing as Andie in Holding Trevor

Muslim movie at gay festival
Barry Ronge	- Published:Oct 28, 2007

A caller to a radio station was ranting about the gay and lesbian community: “What more do they want? They’ve got constitutional rights, they can get married and adopt kids, so what are they still whining about?”

Well, the murder of Sizakele Sigasa and her partner Salome Masooa in Soweto a few months back, their bodies left on a rubbish dump, suggests there is still much that needs attention.

Laws on paper must be backed by altered perceptions, and for 13 years the Out in Africa Gay and Lesbian Film Festival has set out to do exactly that.

The festival’s intention comes with solid endorsement. The Joburg leg will be opened on November 8 by Judge Kate O’Regan of the Constitutional Court.

But the value of the festival is not just symbolic. While challenging prejudice and preconceptions, the films also entertain and engage audiences.

For example, Indian-born Parvez Sharma’s A Jihad for Love is a documentary about the harsh, closeted lives of gay men and lesbians in Muslim culture.

Sharma analyses the Koranic texts on homosexuality, assessing their meaning and contrasting the words with the reality of being gay in a traditional Islamic culture.

The film moves from the relatively tolerant world of Turkey to Egypt to document the exile of a man who was one of 52 guests arrested after attending a gay wedding on a floating disco boat. He was severely beaten and jailed for a year. When he was released he was warned that he could face another jail term and fled into exile in Paris.

A Jihad for Love is, politically speaking, the most controversial film of the festival. Its screening will be preceded by an address by Sandi DuBowski, who directed a previous festival hit, Trembling —Before G-d” which looked at the enclosed lives of gay men in the Jewish Hasidic community.

A Jewish filmmaker, DuBowski, introducing a Muslim film on the same subject, underscores the festival’s fundamental purpose of challenging and exposing acts of prejudice and ignorance.

Another guest at the festival is American actor Jay Brannan, most recently seen in the outrageous Shortbus, playing the third party who becomes involved with a gay couple.

Brannan will introduce Holding Trevor, Rosser Goodman’s examination of a young man on the rebound from a destructive relationship with a heroin addict.

Can he move from that toxic co- dependency into an actual, honest sexual relationship?

Holding Trevor is well written and takes a lucid look at the current mood of gay society.

For giddy fun there’s A Four Letter Word, about a fabulous club bunny who is devastated when a handsome bar pick-up calls him “a gay cliché”.

By contrast, The Witnesses, by André Techiné, is a devastating examination of a group of gay friends who witnessed the onset of the Aids pandemic in France in the early ’80s.

Techiné is an old master of French cinema and this film is a dazzling display of compassion and expertise.

The Out in Africa Gay and Lesbian Film Festival is at Nu Metro, Killarney Mall, from November 1 to November 11.

Parvez Sharma on BBC News (October 27, 2007)

NPR Story: Homosexuality in Muslim World Shrouded in Secrecy

Homosexuality in Muslim World Shrouded in Secrecy

Talk about homosexuality and Islam on "Blog of the Nation."

Talk of the Nation, October 2, 2007 · In an address to an audience at Columbia University last week, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated that homosexuality does not exist in Iran. The comment prompted derisive laughter from his audience and put a spotlight on the hostile treatment of gays and lesbians in the Muslim world.

Parvez Sharma, the filmmaker behind the documentary A Jihad for Love, discusses the underground world of homosexuality in Muslim countries. Filmed in 12 countries and nine languages, the documentary profiles men and women who struggle daily against persecution, danger and social isolation.

Parvez Sharma & Jihad for Love on CNN

Interview with Parvez Sharma on CNN's Screening Room. See 5:11 minutes into the segment.

NPR Story: Homosexuality in Muslim World Shrouded in Secrecy

Talk about homosexuality and Islam on "Blog of the Nation."

Talk of the Nation, October 2, 2007 · In an address to an audience at Columbia University last week, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated that homosexuality does not exist in Iran. The comment prompted derisive laughter from his audience and put a spotlight on the hostile treatment of gays and lesbians in the Muslim world.

Parvez Sharma, the filmmaker behind the documentary A Jihad for Love, discusses the underground world of homosexuality in Muslim countries. Filmed in 12 countries and nine languages, the documentary profiles men and women who struggle daily against persecution, danger and social isolation.

Parvez Sharma Blogs About the Ahmadenijad Controversey

Ahmadinejad and the Homosexuality He Seeks to Deny

Posted September 27, 2007

---

Mahmoud Ahmadi Nejad, the "humble" former mayor of Tehran, has now been thrust on the international stage and if most of the media in the West is to be believed, he is positively Hitlerian.

Not particularly blessed with the dashing good looks I associate with so many Iranian men, the president's refusal to wear the illegal tie (that great symbol of Western imperialism) with his suits gives him at least that "air of debonair," as an Iranian homosexual friend of mine pointed out (Being particularly randy, my friend admits to having a secret crush on the president. I look at him speechlessly, and blame it on the Iranian national condition of taarof).

Continued...

My Jihad, in America and Beyond (by Parvez Sharma)

My Jihad, in America and Beyond - by Parvez Sharma

"Ah! Daneshju Park! The smells that waft from across the street! And the forbidden delights that await inside!"

Talking about a life left behind in Iran, my friend had tears in his eyes. But also a steely resolve that one day he would be back. He also reminded me that a Basij -- a member of the volunteer force of religious vigilantes or guardians of morality, thoughtfully supplied by the powers that are -- had openly expressed a desire to be with him and they had gone home together, not too far from Vali Asr Avenue, and spent a night of passion, the likes of which he has never had since, in each other's arms.

Given the national obsession with Hafez and his poetry, whose homoeroticism many have claimed and studied, I have always felt that the young gentleman who found passion in the park speaks to me in beautiful Farsi, almost in haiku. His language gives him the facility to always sound like he is speaking in poetry. I also assume that President Ahmadi Nejad has probably not wandered into those dark corners of Daneshju Park, a park not that different from the Rambles in the heart of New York, or Nehru Park in Delhi, where I grew up. All of these hidden spaces have been the dark and often depressing settings for so many of us seeking to meet others like us: "homosexuals," in any of the contexts we have existed in.

Many that speak about Ahmadi Nejad and his histrionics have unfortunately not studied Iran's complex, post-1979 history. Vali Asr, a religiously appropriate name chosen for the longest avenue in all of Iran, used to be called Pahlavi Avenue. It was renamed as quickly as the despotic Pahlavi family, Iran's ill-fated ruling dynasty of the time, was consigned to the dustbin of history. This expeditious renaming continued for a generation as the Islamic Republic we know today came to be. On that fateful day of February 1st, 1979, the Ayatollah with the penetrating eyes, the marja al-taqlid (source of imitation) arrived on a plane. He, like the British, the Russians and indeed many before them, laid claim to the soul of an ancient civilization that had been coveted by so many, for so long. This latest invader, however, came from within.

Continued...

Movie on Gay Muslim to Hit Screens

NDTV Correspondent

Friday, September 21, 2007: (New York):

When Mohsin Hendricks an Imam in South Africa revealed that he is gay he expected protests and calls for his death.

But he never imagined he would talk about his sexuality and religion publically.

Hendricks appears in Jihad for Love a documentary about gay Muslim men and women in Iraq, Pakistan, Egypt and South Africa.

Indian filmmaker Parvez Sharma, who is gay himself, wants his movie to reach Muslim communities even where being homosexual remains a crime punishable by death.

"This film is a remarkable opportunity to change consciousness. The next few years are going to see me and the characters in this film, engaged in discussions, using the film as a platform and as a door into opening people's minds, into opening people's hearts," said Sharma.

Sharma focuses on men and women struggling to reconcile their sexuality with being Muslim.

And he interprets Jihad in terms of personal struggle, not holy war.


"I am just tired of people saying that Islam and homosexuality don't go together and that there are no gay and lesbian Muslims. I don't believe that, I have taken my camera into these communities and I have documented these lives for the last six years," said Parvez.

Some participants feared a backlash from their communities. Mohsin was arrested in a raid on a gay club in Cairo in 2001.

He had initially asked Sharma not to show his face, but he changed his mind midway through the film's production.

"For me it's important to talk about it at this point because some people are being alienated and ostracized from communities," said Mohsin.

Jihad for Love is Sharma's first film. The director lives in New York with his partner, an American banker.

Gay Muslim Documentary Coming Out at Toronto

Gay Muslim documentary coming out at Toronto

By Janet Guttsman

TORONTO (Reuters) - It took gay Indian filmmaker Parvez Sharma six years to make "Jihad for Love," a documentary film about gay men and women trying to live Muslim lives in Iraq, Pakistan, Egypt and South Africa.

Now he says his challenge will be to make sure the movie reaches Muslim communities, even in countries where being homosexual remains a crime that could be punishable by death.

"I aim to take this film into Muslim countries as a Muslim," Sharma told Reuters in an interview, noting that the downloading possibilities of the Internet make it far easier to distribute movies than in the past.

"I am going to make sure that this film gets to every Muslim that needs to see it...and if this means I am going to have to smuggle the tapes through my underground contacts in Muslim countries and make sure that people everywhere are able to have screenings for this film, then that's exactly what we are going to do."

The film, which had its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival this week, focuses on a few dozen men and women who seek to reconcile their sexuality with life as Muslims. The title defines jihad as personal struggle, rather than as holy war.

It's a first movie for Sharma, who now lives in New York with his partner, an American banker, and who grumbles that he can't marry in the United States and that he doesn't qualify for a spouse's green card because his partner is a man.

"Islam is a way of life. It's my life," he said. "I think that everything in my own life being a gay Muslim, especially living in a post September 11 world, moved me toward making this film. This film found me."

One of those shown in the movie is South African Muhsin Hendricks, a gay Imam who "came out" to a storm of protest and angry phone-ins to local radio stations, including callers calling for his death.

In the film, he argues that censure of homosexuals from Islamic texts is a censure of forced male rape, rather than of loving relations between two men, and he's had discussion sessions with a local Islamic welfare council.

Speaking in Toronto, he acknowledged it is easier for gays to live in South Africa than in many other countries, although acceptance among Muslims remains slow.

"My community is still very conservative, it's still difficult to work within the community, but it's easier that the constitution is protecting gay rights," he said.

The story is different in Egypt, where another participant in the film, Mazen, was one of those arrested in a 2001 raid on a gay club in Cairo. He was imprisoned for two years before winning asylum in France.

Mazen, whose mother still doesn't know he has taken part "Jihad for Love," said he had initially asked director Sharma not to show his face in the movie, but he changed his mind mid-way through the movie making.

"I decided because I wanted to say a message," he said.

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