A Jihad for Love: Gays Find Intolerance in Islam, Too

First Run Features

Gay Iranian refugees look homeward.

Details

Runs at Varsity, Fri., Sept. 5–Thurs., Sept. 11. Not rated. 81 minutes.

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More About

• Parvez Sharma
• Religion
• Islam

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Muslims, Jews, and Christians may have their, oh, occasional differences, but as an Islamic scholar observes in Parvez Sharma's documentary, there is one point on which the religions agree: Homosexuality is a crime. In his fine Trembling Before G_d, Sandi DuBowski tackled the conflict in the Orthodox Jewish community between religious stricture and sexual orientation; this DuBowski-produced doc addresses the same subject through the veil of Islam, following gay, lesbian, and transvestite Muslims abroad who hew to their faith in the face of hostile, even murderous dogma. Sharma's subjects—an Egyptian man imprisoned and brutalized essentially for the crime of attending a disco; a gay imam whose attempts to find some lenience in the Quran are fiercely rebuffed—share a perhaps puzzling devotion to a religion that, under sharia interpretation, regards their expression of love as a death-penalty offense. And yet the movie leaves open a provocative question: If you pick and choose which of a religion's tenets apply to you, is it still a religion? The conflict seems most deeply felt by Maryam, a Parisian lesbian who cherishes both women and Islam but confesses that she still considers her sexuality haraam—forbidden. The imam clarifies that his is a "jihad" for love in the sense of struggle, not holy war. Considering the hateful rhetoric he faces on a radio call-in show, however, he may be mistaken.