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Amos Lassen wrote on 01/16/2009:

“A Jihad for Love”

Homosexuality in the Muslim World

Amos Lassen

Most of us are aware that it is illegal to be gay in the Muslim world. Homosexuality is very much underground and because of that we know very little about it. Indian director Parvez Sharma has made a documentary that exposes what is going on in the Muslim countries with regard to the gay issue. Sharma, himself, is both a devout Muslim and a homosexual and therefore his film is deeply personal. His story is a heartbreaker and as he tells us how he had been ostracized as a gay man, he further shows that as a Muslim living in America, he became treated unfairly as a Muslim after 9/11.
The film challenges not only intolerance toward gay people in the Muslim world but intolerance toward Muslims in the Western world. Sharma spent six years working on the movie and filmed in twelve countries and in nine languages and managed to gather over four hundred hours of film. What Sharma found is amazing. He found a thriving, secretive gay community in Saudi Arabia and changing attitudes toward homosexuality in both Turkey and India. He also found that, in Egypt, it is possible to be gay, if one lives within the regulations of being secretive and underground. Homosexuality is tolerated in the Muslim world as long as people are not open as long as politics and social identity are not part of the person’s life.
I can imagine what a hard job it was to gain the trust of the people who are interviewed in the film and appear with concealed identities, blurred faces, or in silhouette. The fact that he is Muslim unquestionably helped.
The film is one of both dignity and despairs and is a compassionate look at devout Muslims who struggle to reconcile their religion with their sexual preference. It is interesting to note that only one single short passage in the Koran says that homosexuality is a crime punishable by death but even that is questionable by scholars who say that the prohibition may actually deal with rape and not with relations between consenting adults. Even with this some 4,000 people have been put to death in Iran for alleged homosexual acts since 1979.
Sharma feels that his religion has been depicted as a faith of violence when in effect it is not but it seems from what we see in this film that the violence against gay people illustrates what Sharma calls the “high jacking” of his religion.
The movie does not offer solutions. It gives us a picture of what is and does not show much hope for change. It could be the film that brings about change as happened with Sandi Dubowski’s “Trembling Before G-d” study of gay and lesbian homosexual Jews. There was a little change in opinion and that is better than none at all.