04 Mar 2009
A Jihad for Reconciliation
At the outset of the documentary A Jihad for Love (on More 4 last night), I was expecting a programme filled with Muslim gays and lesbians railing against fundamentalist Islamic ideals that ultimately end in death for homosexuals.
But instead it was a documentary about Muslim gays and lesbians trying to reconcile their sexual orientation with a faith they have been so utterly indoctrinated into, they can't see the wood for the trees.
It was a film loaded with words of love for God and the prophet Mohammed, and equally filled with hate, both for the authorities who enforce laws based on the Koran's ancient stories of Lot, and Sodom and Gommorrah, and deep self-hate based on these same stories.
One of the contributors spat at a television screen, which was showing the trial of 52 gay men who were arrested at a disco in Egypt in 2001 (23 of them were convicted and sent to prison). Then he spoke to his mother on the phone, a woman he may never see again because he cannot go home, praising Allah for getting him a new apartment.
Exiled from Egypt to live on the margins of society in France, he believed God had made him the way he was, yet he couldn't find a space in his deep and unshakable faith for himself to fit, and his anger at himself and the world he lives in.
It was a bleak and sad film about people who are lost because they cannot think of not adhering to a religion that utterly rejects them. Yet it was a film about the spiritual peace a strong connection to your faith can give you.
Complicated stuff, but in the end of the day, it was hard to come out on the side of religion, when so many are suffering because of unshakable faith.