Local Liberal Dribble

After much prompting and insistence from younger men and women, I finally decided to watch Shoaib Mansoor's Khuda Kay Leeya (on DVD).

Before I begin my belated review of the film, I must confess my admiration for Mansoor for being brave enough to actually construct a full length feature on a rather imposing and controversial topic: Terrorism and religious fanaticism in Pakistan.

It is commendable that Mansoor actually chose a daunting and risky topic for his debut film in a time when most people in every artistic field in this country are more likely to avoid doing so, usually pushing the problem under the carpet which now sits on top of a massive heap of socio-political mess that can not be hidden anymore.

The story about a young musician (Fawad Khan) falling prey to conniving jihadists and consequently leaving his whole family bouncing between hell (Taleban) and the devil (the CIA), is a somewhat accurate look at a generation of educated, urban young Pakistanis who are looking for political and social identities in all the wrong places. i.e. religious fanaticism; a warped sense of international politics and Islam; and maybe even the "lawyer's movement," that is turning out to be surrounded by an increasing right-wing and reactionary voltage rather than the democratic and progressive currency that it is claiming to be dealing in.

But this certainly does not mean Mansoor got everything right in this respect. To begin with to me Khuda Key Leeya actually turned out to be an intriguing example portraying exactly why Mushrraf's "enlightened moderation" failed to capture the people's imagination, falling flat on its face right from the word go. Because the film's dialogue when firing shots at things like fanaticism and terrorism may as well have been words for a detailed manifesto of "enlightened moderation," if you know what I mean.

In other words, the overall make-up of the story and the characters of the film is nothing more than an hectic exercise in typically apologist local liberal dribble!


I really do not understand exactly why the mullah brigade was so upset about the film?

It offered nothing new (or "offensive") as answers. It simply repeated the dreadful old act of a "moderate Muslim" soft-feathering a hardliner with counter quotes from the Hadith and certain worn out clichés about social and parental responsibilities.

But then the hardliners too have their set of hadidhs and social and political arguments. It most certainly would take a lot more than a brilliant Nasiruddin Shah playing the role of a "sensible Islamic scholar," to convince the other party that the moderates' set of hadiths are truer than those of the hardliners.'
Who's to tell?

Religious fanaticism is a social, economic and psychological problem, or in other words, it is a purely modern human problem rather than only an ideological one. Unfortunately "moderate Muslims" when they address it become as myopic as the fanatics themselves because they get stuck in the quicksand of conflicting ideas, conveniently forgetting that the fanatic may just be a mentally ill human being with serious social problems and that the moderate himself may only be indulging in a navel-gazing tug-of-war of ideas and words to come to terms with his own liberalism in a place where religion is ubiquitously present in everything and everywhere.

Take for instance the film's last scene in which a "reformed" Fawad actually return's to the fanatic's mosque and decides to deliver the azaan in a turned baseball cap, T-Shirt and jeans!

First of all, just how his family (and the government), never bothers to apprehend the fanatic who is seen remaining free to preach hatred, is a rather strange happening.

But the azaan scene takes the cake in the art of offering a gimmicky response to a question that requires a more substantial answer. I mean, what is Manoor suggesting through this scene? Is he suggesting that attire is the only overwhelming problem in the moderate vs. fanatic debate?

In fact, the film actually never takes a firm stand against the fanatics on issues other than the question of what is the correct "Islamic attire." As a matter of fact, subjects like sex, girlfriends, alcohol, etc., are treated and dismissed by the moderates in the film almost as mindlessly and myopically as they are by the fanatics.

For example, after Fawad comes to his senses, he says he was a good Muslim even before he became a fanatic. And he justifies this by saying "main sharaab, larki, jhoot mein nahi involve tha …" (I wasn't involved in alcohol, girls, lies).


What does that mean? Is he saying he was a better human being than those who do drink and have girlfriends? And how can he be a better Muslim when instead of a womanizing and alcoholic Muslim, it was him who had the tendency to join fanatics in the blackening of billboards, kidnapping women and killing fellow Muslims? How can he be a better Muslim when he was the one with some serious psychological issues and violent urges enough to get brainwashed by an irrational and sadistic band of fanatics?

I mean it wasn't booze or the women that made him do all this, did it?

Really, apart from the difference in attire, there's really very little to separate between the moderates and the fanatics in the film.

Khuda Key Leeya is a tad too self-restrictive and soap operatic and tends to get a little too excited by the shell of the subject the film is based on, but conveniently forgets to also take into consideration the many social, political and psychological complexities that are associated to matters like religious fanaticism.


Also, I think it's time we start addressing irrationally-charged matters like religious fanaticism as a psychological issue rather than an intellectual or an ideological one. Because in the end when we are shown how Fawad's musician brother Shaan is tortured by the American CIA till he goes insane and becomes a vegetable, I wondered, how less insane did the character of Fawad was when he decided to dump music, keep a beard, kidnap his cousin, force her to have his child and pick up a gun in the name of Islam? And was Fawad really cured when he went into the mosque and deliver the azaan in a baseball cap?

I think all he did was change his attire.