Parvez Sharma's documentary, "A Jihad for Love", traces heartening, harrowing stories of Muslim gay men and lesbians.
Comment
09/12/08
A Jihad for Love (2008)
75 %
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted: 28
Fresh: 21
Rotten:7
Average Rating: 6.5/10
Consensus: This powerful documentary explores an important subject -- homosexuality in the Muslim world -- with humanity and courage.
Rated: Not Rated
Genre: Education/General Interest
Theatrical Release: May 21, 2008 Limited
Synopsis: In a time when Islam is under tremendous attack from within and without, A Jihad for Love is a daring documentary filmed in twelve countries and nine languages. Muslim gay filmmaker Parvez Sharma has gone where the silence is loudest,... [More]
Director: Parvez Sharma
Reviews for A Jihad for Love
For all the research, courage and passion that went into it, the movie is sometimes curiously one-note.
09/05/08
It is presented as an inside view of the issue, but bears the judgmental stamp of the outsider, almost to the point of cultural exploitation.
09/05/08
With each familiar story, you wish Sharma dug a little deeper into the issue. Still, his message conveys.
09/04/08
[Director Sharma's] focus on religion and this particular religion's all but certain hostility to same-sex love means there can be no answers to the spiritual searching of many of his characters.
09/04/08
Top Critic To be called a monster and then be stoned to death is pretty much as bad as it can get.
08/29/08
Often fascinating and provocative, although, as a film, it feels a bit long and somewhat repetitive.
08/22/08
The filmmaker and his subjects are to be commended for their honesty, yet there's an overwhelming sameness to their stories that impedes the film's dramatic value.
08/08/08
A Jihad for Love is a courageous documentary on the plight of gays in the Muslim world, and it reveals how the devout attempt to reconcile their sexual orientation and their faith.
08/01/08
Top Critic The film is propelled by tales of Muslims wrestling with their faith and sexual identity.
08/01/08
As compelling in its way as Daniel Karslake's For the Bible Tells Me So.
07/27/08
For various reasons, many of the subjects are interviewed with their faces blurred or hidden, understandably preserving anonymity but maintaining a distance that's unfortunate.
07/24/08
While there is much to admire among the subjects of A Jihad for Love, the film itself is a low-grade production that risks losing the viewer with an unimaginative sequence of talking heads.
07/18/08
More than the question of whether the mainstream religions can ever accept homosexuality, Jihad For Love shines a light on religious devotion, a powerful thing for some, even in the face of persecution and death.
07/18/08
The Muslims here feel bound up in an internal battle (the primary meaning of jihad) as they try to make peace between divine and earthly loves. What's lacking are deeper, more involved ruminations on such feelings, reconciliations and self-recriminations.
07/01/08
Makes an invaluable contribution by recording the names, faces, and stories of gay men and women struggling to reconcile their religion with their sexuality.
06/27/08
Parvez Sharma shares the fundamentalist Muslim perspective, which will look depressingly familiar to anyone who has seen the other films.
05/23/08
The accounts are powerful, but so many of the interviewees' faces are blurred to preserve their anonymity that it feels like you're watching A Jihad for Love through a shower curtain.
05/23/08
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