Manislam – The Magic Mirror of Nefise

Published on May 28, 2014

If every movie di­rec­tor was as metic­u­lous as Ne­fise Özkal Lörentzen, com­men­ta­tor ed­i­tors all around the world would be un­em­ployed. Ne­fise shocks the com­men­ta­tors with the final episode of her Islam and gen­der tril­ogy. The doc­u­men­tary Man­is­lam or­ga­nizes the sec­ond 11th of Sep­tem­ber at­tack of the west­ern world. But this time, the cure of love is used in­stead of the de­struc­tive power of vi­o­lence. Ne­fise at­tacks the minds of ex­trem­ists with the unit­ing weapons of nat­ural nar­ra­tion, spon­tane­ity, em­pa­thy and pure hu­man­ity. After Man­is­lam, it’s not easy to be an ex­trem­ist any­more. Both for rad­i­cal Mus­lims and right wing Chris­tians… Just like it was harder to be an av­er­age Mus­lim or Chris­t­ian after 11th of Sep­tem­ber in 2001. Thanks to Man­is­lam, maybe an era is closed, at least in Nor­way.

Six years old jour­ney of Ne­fise Özkal Lörentzen ar­rived to its des­ti­na­tion on 20th of May with the première of Man­is­lam. At the end of her speech, she in­vited the au­di­ence to stand up for the com­mem­o­ra­tion of mine work­ers in SOMA, Turkey. Thanks to her, 600 hearts of the Saga The­atre felt the do­lor­ous heat of SOMA, like a burn­ing coal. Quick re­minder for the fu­ture time read­ers: More than 300 mine work­ers were killed in SOMA last week and some rel­a­tives of the vic­tims were ac­tively beaten by the Turk­ish Prime Min­is­ter Er­do­gan and his ad­vi­sor Yusuf Yerkel.

Man­is­lam is the third movie of the doc­u­men­tary film maker Ne­fise Özkal Lörentzen. Her pre­vi­ous gen­der stud­ies Gen­der me (2008) and A bal­loon for Allah (2011) helped her di­vide the Mus­lim so­ci­ety into 3 dif­fer­ent lay­ers sim­i­lar to the age cir­cles of a tree. In her first movie ‘Gen­der me’, she car­ried the weak­est and most vul­ner­a­ble layer of Is­lamic so­ci­ety, the ho­mo­sex­u­als. Whereas ‘A bal­loon for Allah’ demon­strated the sec­ond most abused layer of Mus­lim so­ci­ety all over the world, the women. And fi­nally, the jour­ney leads to the core of the prob­lem, the men. How­ever, Ne­fise is not using an ac­cusative way of telling the sto­ries; in­stead she aims to show how the men are also abused by the wrong in­ter­pre­ta­tion of Islam.

For those who did not see the movie yet, it may seem un­fair to give some spoil­ers. How­ever, Ne­fise has been pro­vid­ing the spoil­ers of life, like a poet. Her jour­ney in­tro­duces us 4 Mar­tin Luther of our time. These in­flu­en­tial men are from Bangladesh, In­done­sia, Kuwait and Turkey.

Gezi Park sup­porter Anti-Cap­i­tal­ist Mus­lim Ihsan Eliacik says fol­low­ing words in Man­is­lam. “There are two kinds of re­li­gion. One, dead re­li­gion. Two, liv­ing re­li­gion. The dead re­li­gions are the ones which com­pleted its era in this world. They are no longer valid. Pray­ing 5 times a day in a lan­guage that you don’t know, di­vid­ing peo­ple who fol­low Ra­madan or not, dis­crim­i­nat­ing the women who cover her hair or not… These are the rit­u­als of dead re­li­gions. But the liv­ing re­li­gion is work­ing for hu­man­ity just like the prophets of the an­cient times did. Prac­tic­ing dead re­li­gion saves no one, but fol­low­ing the liv­ing re­li­gion may save us all.” In ad­di­tion to his words, the au­di­ence reaches to the fol­low­ing con­clu­sion: “The first ac­tivists of the world are the prophets.”

The sound­tracks of Man­is­lam are com­posed by Mer­can Dede who will visit Oslo this sum­mer for Mela Fes­ti­val. Mer­can Dede is maybe Turkey’s top spir­i­tual music com­poser. And the movie is shot as a NRK TV pro­duc­tion. For those who did not join the pre­miere, I would like the state the Kuwaiti char­ac­ter of the doc­u­men­tary, Dr. Naif Al Mu­tawa who did a pre­sen­ta­tion at the pre­miere. “Re­li­gion is a beau­ti­ful woman, but the pol­i­tics is a filthy man. The re­li­gion and pol­i­tics should never marry. Be­cause when the re­li­gion gets preg­nant, some­thing uglier than the pol­i­tics is born. And these ugly chil­dren marry more dan­ger­ous and dirt­ier things, and it gets worse and worse. Until some­body comes up and stops this cycle.” His wise words con­firm the founder of mod­ern Turkey. Ataturk do­nated the sec­u­lar­ity prin­ci­ple to Turks 100 years ago as a gift.

In con­clu­sion, stat­ing a poem is more than nec­es­sary to re­lease the emo­tions. Thanks to Ne­fise, Man­is­lam is brought to our worlds as a mir­ror which re­flects only beauty, hu­man­ity and peace. Man­is­lam is the magic mir­ror of Ne­fise.

You have no idea how hard I've looked

for a gift to bring You.

Noth­ing seemed right.

What's the point of bring­ing gold to

the gold mine, or water to the ocean?

Every­thing I came up with was like

tak­ing spices to the Ori­ent.

It's no good giv­ing my heart and my

soul be­cause you al­ready have these.

So I've brought you a mir­ror.

Look at your­self and re­mem­ber me.

~Rumi

Ser­can Leylek

(Watch Man­is­lam for free for Nor­we­gian res­i­dents: http://​tv.​nrk.​no/​program/​kmte30001512/​mannislam)