Film disputes Middle Eastern stereotypes

A Pakistani movie premiering at MSU is starting to change people’s opinions not only about the country, but about it’s predominant religion, Islam.

The movie “Kashf: The Lifting of the Veil,” which premieres at 7:30 p.m. tonight in room B104 of Wells Hall, follows one man’s existential journey through Sufism, which is the spiritual side of Islam, Humza Rasul, the president of the Pakistani Students Association and an applied engineering sciences junior said.

“It shows you a side of Islam that you don’t see in the media every day,” Rasul said. “It’s Islam through music, through poetry. It’s not through guns and it’s not through suicide bombers.”

Many people have false impressions of the people of Pakistan, Rasul said, which is why his group decided to bring the movie to campus.

“Pakistan has a lot of negative images in the media right now,” he said. “We thought we would do work on our behalf to eliminate that thought process.”

With groups such as the Taliban seizing territory in Pakistan, the movie’s director, Ayesha Khan, said many people only consider Pakistan a group of radical Muslims. With 65 percent of the population considering themselves Sufi, Khan said it was time someone made a movie that showed what she called the true Pakistan.

“It’s very much about evolutions of the self more than anything else,” she said. “Sufism’s biggest emphasis is on love, because love is the ultimate manifestation of divinity.”

Khan, who is the first woman in Pakistan to create an English-only film, said when she started the film she only intended to tell the story of the two main characters. But after premiering the film in locations all around the world, she said it’s starting to have a different affect on the audience.

“One of the things it’s inadvertently doing is changing peoples’ perceptions about Pakistan,” she said. “Beyond the headlines when you go into the story line in Pakistan, you suddenly see it’s not a country which is on the verge of collapse.”

The movie was produced by MSU alumnus David Janson, who graduated from MSU in 1955 with a degree in economics. Janson said prior to being involved with the movie, he was like many others who had opinions based more on impressions than facts.

“I was your typical American — fat, dumb and happy, so to speak,” he said. “We’re basically brainwashed toward third-world countries. … We think we’re the best people in the world and that’s not true — there’s the best people everywhere.”