I’ve lost sleep over the Charlie Hebdo killings. Anger, confusion, frustration and even pain descended on my pillow like the flapping wings of an evil bat, and I reach back into my own experience to try to make sense of the bleak future ahead of us.
Nine years ago, I made a documentary about a Buddhist woman who converted to Islam in order to marry a Muslim man. Her name is Thanwadee Hemara, and I and my two co-directors spent two years following her transformation: from a Buddhist to a Muslim, from someone who prayed to Buddha to someone who prayed to Allah, from a woman to a wife, from a wife to a mother. It was hard, but she came through splendidly. The couple now have three lovely children.
We called the film The Convert, and we were lucky to get a slot at Lido. As expected, few people went to see it; perhaps just a few hundred over two weeks.
There was a small problem though. We received a letter signed by a group of Muslim women who criticised us for showing inappropriate images in the film. At first, we thought it was the crucial scene when Ms Thanwadee has to say the pledge in Arabic — “There is no God but Allah, and Mohammad is the Messenger of Allah” — and she didn’t quite nail it convincingly. But no, the objection concerned a few scenes in which the converted Ms Thanwadee was shown without a veil, and when she walked hand in hand with her husband. The letter demanded we do something to correct this bad representation of muslimah.
We were surprised. We thought (or it was our intention) that the film was a human story that expressed something about resilience and the possibility of harmony in the tense climate after 9/11. It’s not even a film about religion per se, but about the struggle for understanding and co-existence.
I didn’t respond to the letter, and the matter died down. Two years later, our team made another documentary about a Muslim rock band that plays Arab-Malay music at mosque fairs and weddings — again, our idea was to present the everyday realities of the Muslim population. This time, we got more than a letter: a Facebook page went up to denounce us and rally Muslims to ban the film because, according to our conservative critics, modern music is haram — or forbidden. A lengthy online debate followed, sometimes educational, sometimes absurd. But still, it’s proof that debate was, and is, possible, even though we disagreed deeply in the end.
Fast forward to last November. A young Muslim called me and asked me to watch a film he had just finished. It was a 90-minute fictional story set in the North featuring an imam, a hitman, a blind boy and a group of mistreated Rohingya. It was also packed with messages exalting the Prophet Mohammad and the virtues of Islam. The man said he made the film as a response to that scandalous clip Innocence of Muslims, the hateful, anti-Islam piece of nonsense that provoked widespread fury and protests in the Islamic world back in 2012. At his office in Ramkhamhaeng, the young filmmaker told me he wanted “to show the film in Europe so Westerners will have a better understanding of Islam”. He was sad and angry that the prophet was insulted, and he wanted to do something to fight those non-believers. His film, made with a paltry budget, was his weapon.
I salute him. The young man is so sincere, so passionate (and I have to say it, so innocent), even though no European cinemas would play his film, and it will be difficult to attract Western viewers to watch a few minutes of it even if he puts it online. I told him so — his film is too local, too conventional, too non-provocative maybe. But with my hand on my heart, I salute him and tell him that he must keep doing what he’s doing, because he chooses not to return insult with insult, not to fight hate speech with hate speech — or something worse and ungodly. His film is far from perfect, but his faith is. And he’s adopted a tone so gentle in his argument against those who hurt him that some people might say it verges on boring — and “boring” won’t sell a movie or a magazine.
Not many will watch his film, though I’m sure more people will watch his than those who watched mine. But that’s the point: he doesn’t have to aim for five million viewers, because small acts of nobility and sacrifice are what we need in this time of chaos and extremism. He wants to bridge the gap, and doing it just one step at a time is heartbreaking, but inevitable.
Kong Rithdee is Deputy Life Editor, Bangkok Post.