A Jihad for Love

Reviewer: James Van Maanen
Rating (out of 5): ***

The strength of Parvez Sharma's documentary, A Jihad for Love comes from its genuine attempt to negotiate the path from Islam to homosexuality. Or is it the reverse? Depends, I guess, on which is most important to you. As an autonomous person, you can change -- or drop entirely -- your religious affiliation. Your sexual preference? Not so easily -- unless you can manage deep denial, to be deeply closeted, or perhaps a simple psychotic break. These resorts may come to mind while watching Jihad for Love because, in many Fundamentalist Muslim-controlled countries, imprisonment and death await those found guilty of this "sin." Seeing the photograph of one young man's back -- scarred from the 1,000 lashes he received while in prison -- should make you all the more impressed and proud of those Muslims who choose to come out and fight for the right to their sexuality -- at the same time making you likely to better understand those who do (or can) not.

Some of these semi-closeted are "seen," if that is the right word, with their faces obscured in this documentary, which, as usual when the face is obscured, does not overly help our identification or connection with them. Nor does the somewhat ordinary tone and content of this 81-minute film. For whatever reason, Mr. Sharma -- who wrote, directed, produced and co-photographed -- doesn't manage to probe terribly deeply beyond what we'd expect from a film on this topic. It may be that many of his subjects were simply not enough at ease to relax and loosen up (the women here prove more interesting than the men). While their situations are always fraught, the people involved don't come very alive. This may also be due to Sharma's jumping around from country to country and not remaining with any individual or group for all that long.

The documentarian's camera travels from South Africa to Turkey, India, Paris and elsewhere, and, though there is plenty of sadness here, it does find some humor now and then (once with a little penguin and again as a group of friends "read" their coffee grounds). Jihad for Love is instructive, too, because it adds history and philosophy to its mix. Since the film is relatively short, interested viewers may want to watch the DVD's Special Features, which include an interview with the filmmaker, plus pieces on Muslim Talk radio, various festivals/cities at which the film has appeared, more about Mushim (one of the film's more interesting characters), Tahir's Pakistan (in which the narrator talks of the mix of pain and pleasure of his first sexual experience), a look at a Turkish transsexual and the profile of an American gay Muslim in D.C.