Special to Review: "The Name of God: Represents Realism in Its Entirety"

In The Name of God: Represents Realism in Its Entirety

Pakinam Amer, Arab News

CAIRO, 10 December 2005 — Saris in golden and red or yellow and green adorning dark, stunningly beautiful girls dancing around with their waist-long black hair fluttering under the morning sun; this is the essential picture of a Bollywood (aka Indian Hollywood) movie that is definitely not what this independent film is about.
“In the Name of God”, a local Indian feature film directed by Jayaraaj and written/produced by the young artist Aryadan Shoukath, represents realism at its core: No extreme make-up, golden masks, colored saris or singing voices.
The film tells the heartbreaking story of a Muslim woman named Samira who marries a young, aspiring, educated man. Through a twist in the plot, her knight in shining armor (in his case red robes and a silk white scarf) delves into Islamic fundamentalism and eventually becomes a terrorist. An educated young woman and a true believer, strong in soul, she crushes her feelings for him and one day bravely — tears brimming her eyes and cutting through her heart — turns him in.
The culture of Kerala, a south Indian state with a considerable Muslim population, is manifested in colorful details. Small characters make big differences in the movie with every person contributing to the master plan and the smooth flow of events.
The movie, whose characters use the regional Malayalam language as opposed to Hindi (the official Indian language), has earned every bit of praise it has received after it was screened at this year’s Cairo International Film Festival. Developing from a liberal small-budget movie that has gained both support from sensible voices and death threats from Islamic extremists, the movie has been praised at the Berlin, London and Asian-Pacific film festivals. It has — unsurprisingly — won awards for direction and best acting.
One of the remarkable aspects of this movie is its dramatic approach; in other words, the angle by which both the director and the scriptwriter handled the almost worn-out issue of terrorism. The artists do not resort to the common rhetoric of “terrorists are so because they are evil” or “they are bad because their religion teaches them Jihad (Holy War).” On the contrary, the movie suggests not a justification but rather a reason behind the current waves of terrorism threatening not only the West, but also a country like India where the major and the oldest religions have lived side-by-side for tens of centuries.
Caught amid the ripples of events and faced by hatred, the Muslim terrorists’ motives and driving forces becomes apparent: Wrong but meaningful. The events underlined in the movie began when a group of Hindu extremists demolish a mosque, brutally killing children, elderly and women.
Inspired by the destruction of the 16th Century Babri Mosque on Dec. 6, 1992, the movie shows how the outbreak of violence formed a vicious circle of yet more violence, as each group of extremists retaliated leading to a series of acts each leaving behind a bloodbath.
Dec. 6 became a black day and Indian Muslim extremists retaliated.
The movie provides a political statement and a religious one. Unlike movies that condemned Islam along with terrorism, this film makes great distinction between each concept stressing on the fact that few Muslims are terrorists and terrorism is not Islam and never will be.
Through the person of Abdel-Rahman Sahib, a true-life character played by a real Islamic scholar named Mummutty, the spirit of the faith is exposed. Sahib, juxtaposed with his own son the believer-turned-terrorist husband of Samira, represents true Islam. Sahib has white-grey hair and a small silver beard, practices Islam in beautiful moderation.
In the movie, we see him fighting terrorism and valiantly keeping patience and holding on to his stance even as his son becomes a terrorist. Shunned by society for turning in her own husband, Sahib becomes Samira’s sanctuary and her mentor. Both of them write and — after difficulty and conflict — succeed in publishing the book entitled “In the Name of God”, which is meant to be a guideline of moderate Islam and a wishful end for terrorism.
It is interesting how the writer uses the word “secular” and the concept of “secularism” in his work, giving it a new meaning other than the popular idea of an irreligious state. Throughout the movie nevertheless, the audience could easily see how a concept like an Islamic state is frowned upon.
Pakistan, the state for ex-Indian Muslims, is referred to — and as Sahib makes clear — as existing thanks to imperialism and is originally an idea encouraged by the British invaders meant to create a religious strife in India and to divide its people.
The notion of secularism is explained by the scriptwriter in a simple manner: “Tolerance; that is the [true] secularism,” Shoukath told Arab News. “It is a secular India that we want; a state where all religions live together and practice freely.”
According to Shoukath, Muslims became a minority — reduced from 40 percent to around 10 percent — since the creation of the partition between India and Pakistan, leading to an understatement of Muslim presence and issues.
The use of color in this movie is very keen and elaborated. Early on, we see Samira as a child celebrating the Muslim feast amid her family. She was wearing her best clothes, laughing and giggling and helping her father distribute charity among the poor.
The mix of laughter, childhood innocence and fragility is turned through the years of hardship into a dreading calm, a daunting realization of the horrors of life and inner strength. We see Samira after a decade on the first day of the feast sitting in a prison yard waiting to see her husband, holding a pack of sweets while a shadow of a distant smile haunts her face as she sees a little child wearing her new clothes with an innocence she once had.
The child herself is not yet another character built for a temporary dramatic effect. We later know that this same child that has crossed Samira’s path is yet another victim of terrorism. The child, who lost her leg because of a bomb, becomes an inspiration for a change of heart in Samira’s husband and entices his real return to God and true Islam.
The first scene in the movie was that of Samira sitting in an empty prison yard, with a dark-colored sari, a melancholy look in her eyes, clinging to hope, while the adhan (the Muslim call to prayer) was recited in the background.
That scene remains in mind, as we see how the young woman strived to become a representative of a tolerant and a fair face of Islam, fighting tradition, upholding righteousness and being loyal to her husband’s memory by never losing hope in his redemption.
Samira is every woman. As one line in the movie said: She is like all other women who suffer not because of her fault but because of a man’s, a son’s or a father’s fault. They make mistakes and “the women wail.”
The last scene in the movie, however, is that of Samira’s husband after his own self-journey, repentance and return to true Islam — again — sitting in the same empty prison courtyard. He sits there yearning to meet his wife as the new enlightened man he has become. He waits and waits but Samira, who had given up the dark colors for red saris, kohl and golden ornaments when her husband returned to his senses and was free not from prison but from his own once-blinded mind, never came.
As he sits, somewhere Samira is blown up in a terrorist attack on a bus. Then again it was Dec. 6, the black day, which the extremists decided to “never forget.”
The movie ends while the husband — soon to be taking his turn in sorrow — waited while the adhan, beginning in the name of God and ending in it, broke another silence.