In an exclusive first-person account for The Advocate, Filmmaker Parvez Sharma, director of the new documentary, A Jihad for Love, discusses homosexuality in Islam and how “his commitment to his faith and his desire to show the world another side of Islam brought him to his own jihad.”

He writes, in The Advocate:

“As the director of A Jihad for Love — the world’s first documentary to take a close look at Islam and homosexuality — I am coming out as a Muslim man. My gay identity is secondary. Queer cinema is filled with stories of gays and lesbians revealing their sexuality, but my film is about people revealing their religion.

“Making this film and finding subjects who would be willing to share their stories with me was a “jihad” (struggle) in itself. In many of the cases it took me years to convince the subjects to participate, and I had to build relationships of mutual trust with them.

“This film tries to construct the first real and comprehensive image of these unlikely creatures — to be P.C., gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer Muslims — and it is forcing many audiences to realize that these terms are a Western construct. Let me be clear: None of these categories means anything to many of my friends living in Cairo or Islamabad. If anything, the languages they speak — Farsi, Arabic, Urdu, Punjabi, and Bengali — have very few words of affirmation to describe the “odd” and “unnatural” behaviors, so to speak, that we indulge in.”

The film is currently doing the International film festival circuit. For the complete article, click here. Watch the trailer: