Filmmaker Parvez Sharma on Islam, homosexuality and the new ‘A Sinner in Mecca’ – LA Times

Sounds like an interesting film given his reflections in this interview:

Q: The hajj is a difficult journey for most Muslims, both physically and spiritually. What compelled you to document yours?

A: The purpose of this film is to mount an open challenge to the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia. For me, it’s not a film about Islam and homosexuality. I’ve done that before.

I think the export of Wahhabism has been the biggest Saudi project for the last century, and they have transferred it to every corner of the Muslim world. Communities have become increasingly conservative. The horrific ideology of ISIS and Al Qaeda would not exist without the Saudi Wahhabi doctrine. This is what they’re teaching children in schools. This is at the root of all the problems in the Muslim world, in my humble opinion.

Q: Your film features footage that someone else sent you of a man being executed by Saudi authorities allegedly for being homosexual. It’s a type of horror we associate with terror groups. Was outing this type of barbarism your point?

A: Yes. It’s ridiculous that in the 21st century, they’re allowed to carry out beheadings on a routine basis. It’s amazing the rest of the world does not say anything.

Q: You’d already openly identified yourself as gay in your previous documentary, yet the Saudi government granted you a visa to enter the kingdom for hajj.

A: I never thought the Saudis would give me a visa. As you learn in the film, I go on the hajj with a Shia group, which I do deliberately [to conceal my identity], even though I’m Sunni.

I think I slipped through the cracks because they were issuing millions of visas at the time. If they had been looking, it wouldn’t have been hard for the Saudis to know who I am.

Q: Most Muslims learn early on that the hajj is at the heart of affirming your faith. Did you feel conflicted since it was a religious journey, but you were also making a film?

A: For me, it’s the toughest journey I’ve taken in my entire life. It’s clear I’m going as a pilgrim, but there’s also the filmmaker half of my brain telling me there’s no way you’re not going to document the most important journey of your life.

Q: Your religious self wonders if you’re doing the right thing. Does it take away from being completely devout if you are also constantly filming? I had to deal with that conflict.

I felt I came out much stronger from the experience and that I made the hajj for thousands of gay Muslims who are probably too afraid to go. It was an enormous task to take on, but I came out the other end a better Muslim.

Q: Some might assume you’d come out of a journey through this very conservative region, and its strain of Islam, denouncing your religion.

A: Islam may have turned its back on me, but Islam is also who I am. It’s very hard to cut off your right hand and say I’ll only function with my left hand from now on.

Faith sits together with every part of my being, and I don’t know any other way to be than Muslim.

Q: “A Sinner in Mecca” documents the good — the powerful experience of being at the Grand Mosque and actually touching the Kaaba — and the bad, which is the dictates of Wahhabism, the commercialization of hajj and the class system that exists, even during the pilgrimage.

A: It’s a complex experience. I needed to be very honest with what is good and bad. I’m in the business of truth-telling.

There have been a couple of films the Saudis have commissioned about the hajj. I call them junket films because the reporters were chosen by them and led by Saudi minders from the Information Ministry.

Source: Filmmaker Parvez Sharma on Islam, homosexuality and the new ‘A Sinner in Mecca’ – LA Times