What I'm Watching #198

AJihadForLove, originally uploaded by Randuwa.

Is a documentary by Parvez Sharma that traces the lives and experiences of gays and lesbians in the Arab world. Men and women who love Islam, who love Allah, and who wage a war daily with both because they have the audacity to love themselves, too. This is their personal "Jihad".

The film adroitly opens their individual worlds to you, warts and all. So whether we're witnessing the trials of the only openly gay Imam in South Africa or the triumphant introduction of a lesbian's lover to her mother in the rural highlands of Turkey you feel compassion and empathy and hope. And in some vinettes you wish you could intervene as in the case of the four young men from Iran who escaped certain execution in their homeland to become wards of the United Nations with no control over their future, and no guarantee that they won't be sent back to Iran.

The only shame is that the only people who are likely to see this film are the denizens of independent and glbt film festivals.