PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS: The men and women who tell their stories, sometimes tearfully, in Parvez Sharma's documentary "A Jihad for Love" have one thing in common: They all continue to believe in the tenets of Islam, regardless of having to hide their personal lives or, worse, escape their homelands because their religion considers their way of life a sin sometimes punishable by death.
The film, which was screened during this year's Frameline festival, is often fascinating and provocative, although, as a film, it feels a bit long and somewhat repetitive.
The only mention of homosexuality in the Quran has to do with Sodom and Gomorrah. Other writings known as the Hadith, a kind of Apocrypha of pronouncements said to have come from Muhammad, are cited to enforce the idea that homosexuality is a sin. That said, the official and popular attitudes toward homosexuality vary from country to country in the Islamic world. Turkey, for example, is a largely Islamic country but has no laws outlawing sexual relations between people of the same sex. In Iran and Egypt, homosexuality is specifically outlawed and the punishment can be extreme.
Sharma's film begins with a look at Muhsin Hendricks, an Islamic scholar who fought his homosexual feelings as a young man, married in the hope of sublimating his true nature, and eventually concluded that he had to find a way to live with being both a believer in Islam and a gay man. He believes that since Allah created him as he is, and because scriptural references condemn homosexual rape and not homosexuality per se, he is living a religious life as a gay Muslim. Documentary Explores Gay Muslims' Lives in 'Love' >>> By David Wiegand, San Francisco Chronicle | August 23, 2008
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback – USA)
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Hardcover – USA)
