Out gay Muslim filmmaker Parvez Sharma has followed his award -winning documentary ‘A Jihad For Love’ with an even more daring look at what it takes to renew his faith when he goes to Mecca for his sacred pilgrimage called a Hajj. Every Muslim is expected to do this at least once in their lifetime, as it is their way of being forgiven for all their sins by Allah. The trouble is that it takes place in the fiercely conservative kingdom of Saudi Arabia where homosexuality is not only forbidden, but it is a crime that is still punishable to this very day by beheading. To make his first visit there even more dangerous, Sharma planned to film the whole thing on his cellphone even though any type of recording in the holy of holy’s places he was visiting was very strictly forbidden.
This is a very personal journey of a man who is constantly questioning his own faith and if he is in fact a good Muslim. What he shows in this totally fascinating film is how centuries of religious traditions struggle to survive in a contemporary society that compels its members to comply with the rather brutal rigorous ceremonies that their forefathers have been doing for years, but even though that is now in the shadows of one of the worlds biggest shopping malls that adjoins the worlds oldest mosque.
Sharma started this voyage of discovery of his based on his struggle of his sexuality within his faith, but over the course of the hajj as he desperately searches for answers, his anxiety seems to move on more to the whole way that the hardliners have manipulated contemporary Islam and that greatly distresses him. To undertake this all and film each step in the highly repressive and secretive country was a brave move on Sharma’s part, and it is difficult to comprehend the depths of such devotion, but comforting to appreciate that he found his own peace by the end.
Labels: 2015, biography, documentary, gay, muslim, religion, Saudi Arabia
