Filmmaker Parvez Sharma Discusses his "Jihad for Love"

With a bachelor's degree in English Literature from the University of Calcutta and three master's degrees (in communication, broadcast journalism, and film and video), and having broached the subject of homosexuality in print in an Indian daily with an article about lesbians, it's perhaps not a surprise that gay Muslim filmmaker Parvez Sharma would have gone on to create a documentary about gay and lesbian Muslims.

Throw in Sharma's experience as television news reporter, a producer and editor for the BBC, the Discovery Channel, and the World Bank Film and Video Unit, plus his role as assistant director for the feature Dance of the Wind (award winner at film festivals in London, Rotterdam, and Nantes) and as a producer for the North American radio and TV program Democracy Now!, and Sharma seems uniquely qualified, if not destined, to have made the documentary, his first feature-length production.

What is astonishing, however, is how he went about it, traveling to nine countries and working with people from diverse cultural backgrounds and languages. That they all have in common, however, is an internal struggle--which Sharma calls a jihad--to live both as GLBT people and as people of devout faith.

A Jihad for Love is the title Parvez has given his film, a brave and loving work that turns a compassionate eye on the plight of GLBT Muslims living under some of the world's most repressive (and, to gays and lesbians, hostile) systems of government; governments that, not coincidentally, have no custom of separation of religion and state: in many of these places, religious law constitutes the law of the land.

But Sharma wants to give GLBT Muslims a voice, and a chance to express not only their fear and their pain at the ways in which they suffer abuse and rejection under religious extremism, but also an opportunity to express their rapturous religious joy. Allah, they say, walks with them loves them, remains with them every minute in a sacred embrace that intermingles the earthly and the divine... even if the men claiming to represent Allah here on Earth do not.

Parvez Sharma took time from his travel itinerary, which even now continues to take him around the world to show his film to audiences of all faiths, and spoke with EDGE about Islam, gay Muslims, and the meaning of faith.

EDGE: Before I ask you about the film, let me ask about your background. You were a newspaper journalist in India when you wrote a story about lesbians in that country, before the subject was discussed publicly. It brought a lot of attention to the subject.

Parvez Sharma: Yes, this was in the early '90s and I was just coming out and trying to be a journalist and succeeding a little bit. It seemed like a natural choice for me to write at that time to write about an issue which had not been spoken about.

In a sense, I was coming out myself, and I was also trying to claim space in the mainstream press as a gay person.

EDGE: It seems like a natural progression that you would have made a film about homosexuality, and its relation to Islam, all these years later.

Parvez Sharma: Absolutely, I feel like everything in my life has led me on to this point. Post-September 11, having just arrived in America in 2000, it seemed important to me to "come out" as a Muslim and to reclaim Islam because of all the discussions that were happening around Islam were very problematic, and continue to be so to this day.

One of the things I always say--and I have said it on my Web site, I've said it on my blog--is that, for me, the central concept in the making of the film is that we are Islam's most unlikely storytellers, and the silence that has surrounded our lives had been extremely loud. We need to demolish that silence, and we need to start staking claims, as Muslims, to our own religion, and finding the space in all the discourses of violence that surround Islam right now [to offer another vision]. If you've seen the film, I guess you can see that the film is deeply respectful about Islam, and offers a very different path into looking at Islam and into discussing Islam, which is, I think, very special.

EDGE: It's a wide-ranging film as well; you don't confine your film to one or two countries, you go to nine countries to interview gay and lesbian Muslims.

Parvez Sharma: It does. I went to more countries than I actually ended up using in the film, but that is the nature of [being] in the business of truth-telling, story-telling, as a documentary filmmaker, and you try to get these many disparate elements together to tell the story. What was important to me was to make sure that throughout the film all of the subjects were coming out as Muslims first, and claiming Islam and being Muslim as their primary identity, and being gay or lesbian definitely as a secondary identity.

The reason for showing the story from so many countries was to try and change this concept that we have in the West of Islam as being monolithic, and static, The idea was to construct [a presentation of] Islam that is diverse, that is full of the influences of different cultures, and that has spread in many different ways, in many different lands. By crossing all these geographical boundaries, and also crossing over these worlds of Islam that were, in many ways, different from each other, I think, and I hope, that you got that sense, watching the film.

EDGE: I definitely got the sense, watching the film, that Islam is a bigger, more diverse faith, and that not all of Islam is represented by the Taliban.

Parvez Sharma: No, and that's one of the tings that I have constantly worked toward, is to say that the Islam that President Bush talks about, for example, or the Islam that Osama bin Laden talks about, for example... actually, they are speaking in very similar voices about Islam. They are almost talking about the same kind of Islam, but neither of them is representing what is the largest majority of millions of Muslims around the world who have their own struggles, their own jihads, and are often stuck in difficult economic situations under autocratic regimes, and do not want to talk about violence that a very small minority of the religion has decided will be the main talking point.

That, for me, has been the most significant challenge. I mean, just the title of the film itself: we're talking about love and compassion and understanding; and we're saying that's it's a jihad for love; it's really amazing to use one of the most contested words in modern times, which is "jihad," and put it in the same phrase as "love," and to say that we're struggling, all of us, for love.

EDGE: In the film, one of the people who appears talks about his jihad as a personal struggle. You have written about this as well, saying that this film is about a jihad in the sense of a struggle, not with anyone else, but within oneself.

Parvez Sharma: In the Qu'ran, and in the teachings of Mohammed himself there is [reference] to the greater jihad, and the greater jihad is always struggle with the self, which is what is pointed out in the film. And I certainly am not the only Muslim, and [the fellow who speaks about his inner struggle] is certainly not the only subject in the film, engaging with that concept of the bigger jihad right now. What is happening for all of us, whether we live Muslim countries, or whether we live in America, is this critical choice that we need to make at this time, which is, "Are we going to choose the language of violence and oppression that a small minority speaks for, or are we going to claim the concepts that are inherent in our religion which talk about compassion, which talk about love, which talk about understanding?" And this is extremely challenging; the people who are daring to speak out about this greater jihad are the ones who are going to take the discussion about Islam in a profoundly different direction.

EDGE: It was intriguing to see how almost all of the people who speak in your film about Islam and about Allah have such devotion to God and their faith that they are practically in tears.

Parvez Sharma: Yes. It's really remarkable. I struggled hard to make sure that this premise that I went into while making the film, that the subjects of the film are going to end up being the most unlikely storytellers for Islam, was something that I remain tried to throughout the making and editing of the film. What is remarkable is that al of these individuals, all very remarkable and intelligent people, have this charm and profound connection to their faith, which is unshakeable in the face of condemnation that you also see in the film. That, to me, is very special, because they are saying that even if here is condemnation from different mainstream orthodox Islamic opinions, they are going to stay true to their faith, and they are going to lay equal claim to that faith, They are saying we are as Muslim as anybody else, and we lead our lives as good Muslims. Even if I was not a Muslim filmmaker, that dilemma between their sexuality and their profoundly held faith is one that is very compelling to document. I feel that I have been privileged and honored to get into the lives of these people and to try to document that dilemma, and some of those subjects have moved beyond that dilemma, and some of them are still struggling with it.

EDGE: It's a dilemma not only for the individuals, but it seems to be a dilemma for the faith as a whole--as with the young man who tells the story about waiting outside the temple to ask a clergyman about Islam's view of homosexuality. The clergyman tells the young man that it's impossible, that the earth would split open... and then the clergyman asks the young man to go home and have sex with him!

Parvez Sharma: Yes, isn't that interesting? That scene seems to reflect [events from] certain sections of the Christian, the Catholic, church, showing it to be present in the Islamic clergy as well. I have always felt that the people who are the most homophobic on the surface are the ones who might engage in homosexual activity, but at the same time, in public, be deniers of homosexuality.

We've seen that raging debate around pedophilia and around sexual mores within the Catholic church, and I feel that within the Muslim clergy it's a s much of a problem, and we need to highlight that. But also, in this film, I'm trying to focus, really, on the subjects, to see their homosexuality definitely as a natural part of their being. The discussion of abuse within the Islam religion would be a different discussion, and could constitute a different film.

EDGE: Do you have any intention to make other films along these lines?

Parvez Sharma: Definitely. For me, the end of making the film is just the beginning of the work. What I plan to do for the next few years is to make sure that Jihad goes into every community, every living room, every bedroom, everywhere it needs to be, where it is going to impact lives, where it is going to change lives, so that some young person in Tehran, or in Jakarta, or in Indonesia doesn't feel alone; doesn't feel that they are the only ones who have been asked to turn away from their mosques, from their communities, their families. And the great thing about a film like this is that it's an opportunity to try to create discussion, where discussion has been long overdue.

EDGE: Do you believe that in the long run, or even the short term, this film will make a significant impact? Will it be heard by the fundamentalists? Will it change their attitudes?

Parvez Sharma: Well, I'm really opposed to the term "fundamentalists." We're talking about extremists. The people who we call fundamentalists are actually not talking about the fundamentals of any religion.

There are extreme points of view within the Islamic orthodox faith, and definitely people are going to engage with this film. In the making of this film, I have tried very hard to go to those extreme voices and put them on camera, and you see them discussing this idea of homosexuality being a sin. My jihad, if you will, is to make sure I can take this film into mosques, into communities where people would not be willing to have a discussion around homosexuality, or where they would deny homosexuality within their community, and say, "It is not Islamic, it does not exist," as we saw with [Iranian] President Ahmadinejad, and present to them the humanity of these subjects, and the fact that it is a documentary, that it is true, that the camera does not life, is compelling evidence for anyone who would deny the existence of homosexuality. What they need to engage with is the humanity of these Muslims, and the immense struggle they have been put through by their own communities.

EDGE: Some of the people in the film were reluctant to show their faces or to give their full names out of fear for their safety, or their family's safety. Do you feel that your personal safety is at risk, having made this film and having the goal of taking it into countries where it will not be welcomed by extremists?

Parvez Sharma: I do not feel a sense of danger. I feel a sense of tremendous optimism right now. I have just returned from Brazil, where I was for the last five days. It's a country where any knowledge of Islam is pretty much nonexistent. It's a very Catholic country. The audiences gave such an amazing [reception] to the film; they stayed for the question and answer sessions. Even at the Toronto Film Festival, the [reaction] was extremely positive.

Speaking to you at this point, I have only been graced by love and understanding from everyone who has cared to see the film. My position about feeling any sense of danger is to invite anyone who would feel violent about this film to actually engage with the film, to see it before they rush to pass judgment on the film, or on the filmmaker, or on the subject of the film. It is only when people are able to engage with a work like this, and interact with it [by seeing it before them] on the screen, that they understand what the film is trying to do. That is the message I am trying to put forward.

I feel that this film could open a door into Islam that has been closed for too long.