20:36 08/06/2015
London - Millions of Muslims each year make the arduous and
exhausting haj pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, but
for one filmmaker, it was a journey that could have cost him his life.
The
documentary "A Sinner in Mecca", which screened at the Sheffield Doc
Fest on Sunday, follows Parvez Sharma, a gay Muslim living in New York,
on his once-in-a-lifetime journey to a country where homosexuality is
punishable by death.
For
many Muslims, travelling to Mecca is the culmination of their entire
lives, but for Sharma, who secretly filmed his pilgrimage on an iPhone,
it was borne of a need to prove that he could reconcile his sexuality
with his devotion to Islam.
Sharma said he was fortunate to be
allowed into the conservative Islamic kingdom, despite his sexuality and
a film career in which he has challenged conservative Islam.
"I
was going back into the closet as a gay man, and also a filmmaker," said
Sharma, who was publicly labelled an infidel in Saudi Arabia for his
2007 film "A Jihad for Love", which documented the lives of gay and
lesbian Muslims worldwide.
"I was probably the most public Muslim
homosexual on the planet and my "sins" were very visible to anyone would
care to simply search for my name online," Sharma told the Thomson
Reuters Foundation at the annual film festival.
As a stark
reminder of the chasm between Sharma's sexuality and his faith, the film
opens with an exchange of distressed messages on a gay social network
site between the filmmaker in New York and his friend Mo in the Saudi
city of Medina.
In a frantic flurry of keystrokes, Mo recalls
watching the beheading of a man in public, who he says was rumoured to
have been executed because he was accused of being gay.
"Please help me get the out of this country it's hell. HELL. HELL. HELL," Mo says on the networking site.
Shame
The
film not only follows the pilgrimage, but also explores Sharma's life
with husband Dan in New York, and his troubled relationship with his
late mother as a young man in India.
Having travelled to India at
the end of his time in Mecca, Sharma reads various letters from his
mother, who died of cancer when he was 21 imploring him to find a wife.
"I always wonder 'Did the shame of my sexuality kill her? Am I the one who has sinned?'" Sharma asks himself in the film.
"Mother never forgave me for being gay Her anger was relentless, and my shame eternal."
It
is this shame that Sharma wrestles with as he narrates the pilgrimage
which all Muslims must undertake once in their lives, to cleanse them of
their sins in the eyes of Allah.
The filmmaker is wracked with
doubt throughout his journey, often pondering if he will be accepted by
Allah and denouncing contemporary Islam as at war with itself and having
been "hijacked by a violent minority".
In one ritual of the haj, known as qurbani, Sharma kills a goat by slitting its throat, yet is overcome with remorse.
"By
killing another living being, I have also killed part of myself. What
is gone is the part of me that wondered if Islam would accept me it is
up to me, as a gay Muslim, to accept Islam," Sharma says as the film
concludes.
Reflecting on what he refers to as the greatest journey
of his life, Sharma talks about powerful moments where he felt
completely alone despite being surrounded by millions of people.
"I
felt I was making the pilgrimage on behalf of hundreds of thousands of
gay Muslims who would never be able to go due to being too afraid. For
me it was my haj of defiance."
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