News India Times
October 9, 2015
22
Arts & Entertainment
– that’s all you need to know
By Rachel Lowry
–NEW YORK
mong the 2 million
Muslims who flock to
Saudi Arabia each year
for the hajj pilgrimage,
Parvez Sharma’s jour-
ney stands out.
He filmed his 2011 trip
despite strict prohibitions
against camera use at holy sites
in Mecca, and he’s openly gay, a
crime punishable by death in
the desert kingdom.
“Contemporary Islam is at
war with itself, and I have fought
hard to not be a casualty,”
Sharma says in “A Sinner in
Mecca,” which premiered to
hundreds of viewers in NewYork
City on Sept. 4.
Born in India and based in
NewYork, Sharma, 41, has been
documenting the lives of gay
and lesbian Muslims for years.
Since the 2007 release of his doc-
umentary “A Jihad for Love,”
which chronicles the lives of gay
and lesbian Muslims in 12 coun-
tries, he’s been labeled an infidel
in Saudi Arabia.
Sharma’s latest autobiograph-
ical documentary strives to high-
light the complexities of his reli-
gion. “I’m still a little shaken
from it all,” said NewYork resi-
dent Mamta Prakash after
watching the premiere at
Cinema Village in theWest
Village. “It really brought across
his strong faith and love for
Islam and was extremely mov-
ing.”
The documentary opens with
clips from Sharma’s marriage to
his husband at City Hall in
Manhattan. He grapples with his
identity as a devout Muslim
when many fellow Muslims con-
demn his wedding. He is faced
with what he calls a crisis of
faith. “I need evidence that my
faith is strong enough to survive
this journey,” he says.
Equipped with an iPhone 4S
and two small cameras, Sharma
then takes viewers on one of the
largest human pilgrimages in the
world. “I was terrified, I was
absolutely terrified,” Sharma
said. “I even wrote my will
before I left because I did not
know if I would come back
alive.”
In the film, Sharma com-
ments on Mecca’s growing com-
mercialization, calling it the
“Mecca of capitalism.” After
prayer rituals at a holy site, he
finds himself in a crowded
Starbucks at a huge adjoining
shopping mall.
At one point, Sharma meets a
Pakistani man who had come to
Mecca to be forgiven for partici-
pating in an honor killing of his
brother’s wife. In another scene,
Sharma reveals his sexual orien-
tation to an American pilgrim
who asks, “Why would you want
to be part of something that
does not want to be part of you?”
“The film was a beautiful
insight into a very personal
account of a religious journey,”
said Meenu Mahajan, a New
York resident from India who
watched the premiere.
“I felt it was a privilege to
observe this private, religious
expedition.”
In the film, Sharma con-
demns the Saudi government’s
strict interpretation of Islam,
which he says promotes the
dangerous ideology that pro-
duces groups such as the mili-
tant Islamic State. Sharma takes
viewers to what he calls the
“front line of Islam”: a growing
dissonance between its peace-
loving majority —who come to
Saudi Arabia to complete the
hajj, a once-in-a-lifetime reli-
gious obligation required of all
able-bodied Muslims — and
government-supported violent
extremists.
Sharma’s conclusion in the
film is complex, if not revelatory.
The hajj teaches him to recon-
cile his sexuality and faith from
within.
“It’s not about Islam accept-
ing me,” Sharma says near the
end. “It’s up to me, as a gay
Muslim, to accept Islam.”
The film has met both
acclaim and criticism.
“There is an enormous
amount of debate and discus-
sion about it,” Sharma said.
“Scores of people have respond-
ed positively at festivals, and that
has been heartening. But what
has not been heartening is this
enormous amount of hate mail
and death threats that I seem to
wake up to every day at this
point. Being at the receiving end
is really challenging. It’s very
hard to not internalize what is
coming your way.”
Sharma launched an
Indiegogo campaign to raise
funds for his movie to be distrib-
uted to the broader Muslim
world. It will open in Los Angeles
later this month and will be
available on iTunes by October.
Meanwhile, he lives with his
husband in NewYork and hopes
his film helps broaden the con-
versation both within Islam and
among its critics.
“There is this tendency to
demonize anyone that is Muslim
and to think that every Muslim
susbscribes to a particular ideol-
ogy of violence,” he said. “People
like me try as hard as possible to
educate non-Muslims.”
His film, he hopes, is an offer-
ing toward that end.
These stories are part of a
series on the intersection of
faith, ethnicity and sexuality,
brought to you with support
from the Arcus Foundation.
– TheWashigton Post
ByMichael Roddy
– LONDON
T
he one thing that makes
Malala Yousafzai blush
in a documentary about
her being released next
month is when filmmaker
Davis Guggenheim (“An
Inconvenient Truth”) asks the
now 18-year-old Nobel Peace
Prize winner if she would ever
ask a boy for a date.
She claps a hand to her
mouth and giggles, while later
a camera shot of her comput-
er shows her perusing pic-
tures of Pakistani cricketer
Shahid Afridi, tennis pro
Roger Federer and actor Brad
Pitt.
But the young Pakistani
woman who on Friday opens
a summit of world leaders at
the United Nations otherwise
comes across in “He Named
Me Malala” as a formidable
proponent of exactly what
prompted the Taliban to try to
kill her in her native Swat
Valley: education for every-
one, but particularly for girls.
“I am those 66 million girls
who are deprived of educa-
tion,” she says in the film. “I’m
not a lone voice, I’mmany
and our voices are our most
powerful weapons. One child,
one teacher, one book and
one pen – they can change
the world.”
The 2012 attack on
Yousafzai by a Taliban fighter
who stopped her school bus
and shot her left her with
head injuries she was not
expected to survive.
The film shows intimate
details of the long process of
rehabilitation after she was
airlifted to England for
medical care, undergoing
therapy that included
learning how to catch a
ball again and recover-
ing her power of
speech.
She still has no
hearing in her left
ear and her motor
control of the left
side of her face is
impaired, but the
film shows she
hasn’t lost a jot of the
bravery that made her a
target for the Taliban.
Following a meeting
with U.S. President
Barack Obama, an
interviewer asks if she
had spoken to Obama
about her concern that
drone attacks “are
fuelling terrorism”, to
which she responds,
“Yes, of course.”
The film opens with a tale
explaining that she is named
for an Afghani heroine who
rallied retreating Pashtun
fighters to fight against British
invaders at the 1880 Battle of
Maiwand, and was killed dur-
ing the fighting.
Asked by Guggenheim if he
knew that giving his only
daughter that name would
make her different from other
women in Swat, her father,
Ziauddin Yousafzai, says:
“You’re right.”
The film is effective at teas-
ing out the strong bond
between father and daughter,
and also shows some of the
difficulties the family has had
adjusting to life in Britain.
Malala says she would give
anything to see her home in
Swat again, despite Taliban
vows to kill her if she returns.
“When I think of home I
miss the dirty streets, I miss
the river, I miss my friends. I
just want to see that house
just once,” she says.
But for all that her life has
been turned upside down,
when asked if she has ever
been angry about what hap-
pened, she says: “Never.”
The film is released in the
United States Oct 2.
– Reuters
A
Gay Muslim Films Secret
Pilgrimage In ‘A Sinner In Mecca’
‘He Named Me Malala’ Film
Is A Profile In Courage
