The Persian Version was recently released in cinemas around the world to mixed reviews. In this article, Michael Dhanoya explains why the film has a particular impact on Shīʿa Muslims, and how they have responded to it.
The Persian Version — Hollywood’s latest dramedy — has split audiences. While critics have hailed it a feel-good ‘crowd-pleaser’ that keeps cinema-goers crying and laughing in equal measure throughout, the film has offended Shīʿa Muslims across the UK. Not only do they feel insulted by how historical and stereotypical motifs of Arabs and Muslims are used to represent Shīʿa Muslims in the film, but so too because of how certain aspects of Shīʿa Islam are used for comedy effect. To better understand the offence caused, this article considers the film in light of Shīʿa Islamic theology and orientalist notions of Western socio-cultural superiority over ‘the East’, before concluding by outlining the message this motion picture expresses to Muslim cinema-goers.
The Persian Version
Released in cinemas nationwide on the 22nd March 2024 (before subsequently becoming available on Netflix), The Persian Version is a semi-autobiographical account of the film’s writer and director (Maryam Keshavarz) as she and her Iranian-American family negotiate life in the U.S.A. in the early 2000s. The plot follows the frayed relationship between Leila and her mother (a Twelver Shīʿa Muslim), triggered by the former’s past homosexual relationship and her current predicament of falling pregnant after a drunken one-night stand with a drag artist. However, confronting details of her mother’s life growing up and a shameful secret left behind in Iran causes Leila to see her mother and herself in a new light.
Yet, one scene in the film has outraged the UK’s Shīʿa Muslims. As Leila and her mother sit in traffic, the latter calls out to Imām al-Zamān for help. A motorcyclist stops in front of their car, which Leila’s mother takes as a sign of the Imām coming to their aid. Leila then breaks the fourth wall by looking into the camera and informing the audience that Shīʿa Muslims are into ‘this magic realist stuff’, with Imām al-Zamān being a saviour who appears (in either animal or human form) to Shīʿa Muslims in dire circumstances. Hence, Leila refers to the Imām as ‘the big guy’. She then asks, ‘Oh you’re sceptical, huh? Well, I sort of am too.’ Contrasting her mother’s utter faith in the Imām with her contrasting cynicism, Leila declares, ‘She’s old world, I’m new world’. Finally, after glancing over at the motorcyclist whom her mother believes to be an incarnation of the Imām, Leila gushes, ‘Imām al-Zamān is cute tonight, am I right?’ The offence caused by such a scene is best ascertained by understanding the role played by Imām al-Zamān in Shīʿa Islamic theology.
Imām al-Zamān
A cornerstone of Twelver Shīʿa Islamic theology is the belief in ‘Imamate’, namely, the theological principle stating that after the Prophet Muḥammad’s death, the Muslim community would be presided over by twelve successive righteous leaders or Imāms. The final ruler is Imām al-Zamān (himself a direct descendant of the Prophet). A vital element of Shīʿa Islamic eschatology, the Imām will reappear at the end of times, establishing justice and Islam across the globe. Yet beforehand, the Imām may appear and aid pious believers in their time of need.
For the Shīʿa, the unnecessary sexualisation of their revered religious figure mirrors sentiments expressed by Christians who protested the depiction of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene engaged in sexual intercourse in the 1988 religious epic, The Last Temptation of Christ. Moreover, the mocking tone in which Leila discusses the Imām echoes the ridiculing tone presented in Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses (also 1988) when portraying the Prophet Muḥammad being ensnared by Satan when revealing passages from the Qurʾān. The notion of the Imām appearing in animal form contradicts mainstream Shīʿa thought. Finally, the prohibition on Muslims performing magic is evident in various Islamic scriptural sources. Thus, Leila’s assertion that Shīʿa Muslims are ‘into realist magic’ is particularly insensitive. Unsurprisingly, Shīʿa Muslims have condemned the film. Indeed, Shīʿa Muslim mosques across the UK have hosted lectures discussing the scene, with the congregations being encouraged to boycott those cinemas showing screenings of the film. Moreover, various Ahl al-Bayt Societies (student-run university societies catering for Shīʿa Muslim students) have created and contributed to online newsreels calling on Shīʿa Muslims to shun the film. The promotion of these reels, accompanied by the hashtag ‘#BoycottNetflix’, illustrates a call for Shīʿa Muslims to cancel their Netflix subscriptions due to the company’s streaming of the film.
West vs. East
Such a deprecating image of Islam and Muslims is commonplace in Western entertainment circles and speaks to wider notions of Western cultural superiority over ‘the East’. In his pioneering work Orientalism (1978), Palestinian-American academic Edward Said examines how Western thinkers discuss the cultures and peoples of ‘the Orient’ (a term for a geographic expanse covering Asia Minor and North Africa to Southeast Asia) in essentialist terms. In particular, such peoples are often depicted as culturally and intellectually inferior and thus opposed to the enlightened, forward-thinking and superior West. This exclusivist ‘Inferior East (Orient)-Superior West (Occident)’ dichotomy grounded a worldview that justified European colonialism and imperialism.
Yet, this outlook did not disappear with the termination of the colonial age and still manifests in the portrayal of Islam and Muslims in Western big and small screen productions. For example, East Is East (1999) sees a Pakistani Muslim husband and his English wife raise their children in 1970s Greater Manchester. As the plot develops, the children reject their father’s traditional Pakistani-Muslim worldview (caricatured by notions of arranged marriages and strict adherence to Islam) for all things Western (represented in scenes depicting sexual liberation and nightclubbing). The backwardness of Muslims and their inability to assimilate to Western values also manifested when EastEnders (a British soap opera) aired a storyline which saw Syed Masood rejected by his Muslim family due to his homosexuality.
Arguably, The Persian Version depicts the push-pull cultural battle underpinning Leila’s second-generation immigrant identity crises, thereby reflecting life growing up at the intersection between two cultures with differing appreciations of Islamic values. Yet, the filmmaking process sees unwanted content relegated to the cutting room floor. The inclusion of a scene referring to specific aspects of Shīʿa Islamic theology (all of which would have been lost on the film’s non-Shīʿa audience), illustrates Keshavarz’s targeted reference to Shīʿa Islam aimed directly at Shīʿa Muslim cinema-goers. Regurgitating notions of European imperialist superiority, the scene juxtaposes the Islamic ‘old world’ with the American/Western ‘new world’ before contemptuously rejecting the former, thereby conveying the latter as the socio-cultural outlook that one ought to adhere to. The battle of worldviews is presented in the film as an unequivocal victory for the West over the East.
Message Sent
Be it in art, literature, film, television shows or video games, Western artefacts have a long history of derogating Islam and Eastern societies. Thus, the question arises regarding what message is sent to Muslims by the perpetual disparaging of their cultural heritage. Rather than adopting the traditional approach of explicitly ridiculing Islam and Muslims in their totality, The Persian Version manifests a more intense level of commitment to seeking to insult Islam by attacking the adherents of a specific denomination of the faith. Consequently, Hollywood’s latest offering makes the message clear — Muslims are not welcome in the West.
Photo by Aneta Pawlik on Unsplash
Note: This article gives the views of the author, not the position of LSE Religion and Global Society nor the London School of Economics and Political Science.
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