“Jihad for Love” is badly titled and roughly assembled, but this documentary carries a punch — not so much for the information contained in it, but for the fact that the people depicted might be killed in certain countries just for their participation.
The subject here is homosexuality and Islam. New York-based filmmaker Parvez Sharma took a camera across half the world to interview various gay Muslims, two-thirds of whom have their faces blurred on video because of the risk they could be imprisoned or killed when the movie is shown.
Sharma begins with a gay Imam in South Africa, Muhsin Hendricks. He’s the most articulate of the film’s testifiers, a once-married father who skillfully debates the Koran with more strict practitioners. (His face is not blurred, but his children’s faces are — a sad touch.)
We meet a lesbian Arab couple in Istanbul, who live in relative ease and openness. Then there’s an Egyptian man who was imprisoned for two years (including torture) after being arrested in a nightclub sweep. He lives in Paris now.
Sharma keeps returning to the story of four Iranian men, two of whom have their faces blurred throughout. They escaped Iran to Turkey, but are tensely waiting to discover whether they can get diplomatic asylum in Canada. The alternative is getting sent back to Iran when their visas run out, so it’s literally a life-or-death dilemma. (One of the men received 100 lashes across his back after being arrested for “sexual preference” in Iran.)
That’s the same Iran declared a gay-free zone by its bizarre president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who said, “We do not have homosexuals in Iran like you do in your country,” when he spoke in the U.S. last year. This film suggests he might be getting some faulty intel.
As interesting as this movie is, it has some of the same exasperating qualities as “Trembling Before G-d,” the documentary about Jewish homosexuals made by Sandi DuBowski (who is the producer here). Both films have the spectacle of gay people beating their heads against the wall to reconcile their sexuality with a religion that condemns and rejects them.
And yet, they keep searching for loopholes in the teachings that might be construed as approval. It’s like watching someone clinging to an abusive partner.
Repeatedly in “Jihad for Love” we see people — some of them Imams — parsing holy texts and drawing the meaning they want from them. That happens in every religion, but in this case, the consequences are especially tragic.
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