Islamic Bigotry: The Slaughter of 4,000 Gays

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As I have filmed A Jihad for Love, I have struggled to explain the difficulties of language to many, including the mostly American production team I have worked with in New York. Iranian culture resembles India's, where I grew up, in many ways; Persian was in fact the language of the Mughal courts only a few hundred years ago. As I have taken my camera to many parts of the many different worlds of Islam, I have only been able to confirm what I always knew. The terminologies of "liberation theology" or even identity constructs, social or political, like "gay," "lesbian," "bisexual," "transgender," "intersex," "queer," etc., that seem to inform so much of the endless debates in the air-conditioned corridors of Western academia or the endless conferences organized by diasporic Muslims and their friends, are of little if any consequence on the streets of Delhi, Lahore, Dhaka, Cairo, Shiraz, or Jeddah. Homosexuality has not only been tolerated but sometimes even openly celebrated in Islamic societies for more than 1,400 years. This is not the kind of homosexual persona that we adopt in the West. A language of affirmation is woefully absent. Marriage -- and let's be clear: marriage of the heterosexual kind -- is not a choice, but a societal and familial obligation. Marching down Main Street holding banners of identity politics and affirmation is certainly not a desirable outcome of any so-called "liberation." Invisibility is the identity often preferred by the majority and I have examined that very "jihad" by taking my camera into that world of "invisibility." This film took six years to make for a reason. The fact that the lives of diasporic Muslims are absent from my film was a clear but difficult choice. And indeed that would be a different, equally worthy project.

What is critical, however, is that we as Muslims not allow the mediators in the Western media and, indeed, our Islamic extremist brothers -- certainly a minority in my opinion -- to define our Islams for us. I usually shun the simplifications of terms like "terrorist" and "fundamentalist." For me, the violent minority that claims to speak for my religion does not adhere to the fundamentals of my faith. The ridicule that the elected president of a nation of more than 70 million, branded a "cruel and petty dictator," has been subjected to by the smallest minority of arrogant opinion makers is appalling. Clearly the war drums are beating again and in the sadly black-and-white American mindscape of today, this nation's overextended troops continue the ill-informed crusades of their leaders. These are troubling times, yet for artists, as in all times of dissent and repression, the atmosphere is rich and full of possibility. My struggle, my jihad as I define it for myself, keeping all Qur'anic tenets in mind, grows stronger. That jihad is to continue to avoid the easy trap of being an apologist for my faith, and to also rightfully criticize what I know is deeply wrong within it. We Muslims are members of the world's fastest growing religion, indeed the second largest. Many of us have been misunderstood and unheard for too long, and many of us will need to wage critical jihads within ourselves and our own communities to decide who will speak for all of our different Islams.

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