FILM: A SINNER IN MECCA

In the film, openly gay Muslim director Parvez Sharma (A Jihad for Love) documents his pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, where filming is strictly prohibited and homosexuality is a crime punishable by death.  Sharma felt these were risks he had to take as he embarked on his Hajj pilgrimage, a journey considered the greatest accomplishment and aspiration within Islam. On his journey Sharma aims to look beyond 21st-century Islam’s crises of religious extremism, commercialism and sectarian battles. He brings back the story of the religion like it has never been told before, having endured the biggest jihad there is: the struggle with the self.

Sharma is already a marked, gay Muslim man following the release of his first film on Islam and homosexuality called A Jihad for Love.  Even before A SINNER IN MECCA’s film’s first public screening, Sharma has already received a barrage of hate mail and death threats, as evidenced in the comments on the film’s trailer on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzshP2k5FMk



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