Thursday, July 25, 2013

The British Comedy ..The Infidel...

Last night i watched a British comedy called "infidel".
It was about a Muslim man and his family.
One day while cleaning out his mother house,he comes across a paper saying he was adopted.
He goes to the foundling and orphanage only to find that his birth parents where Jewish.
He decides that since the parents who raised him are now both dead,he would try to find and meet his biological parent,his father,who is dying in a Jewish nursing home.
At the same time he is also trying  to be supportive to his son,who is about to marry a Muslim girl,whose step father, is an Imam,and feels Muslim laws should be followed.
His mother neighbor,who is Jewish,and difficult to talk to,agrees to call a truce,and help him to understand his father Jewish heritage and religion.
The issues that seem to keep stepping in his way are a rabbi,who will not allow him to enter his father room,until he can understand the Jewish traditions and the Imam who feels that things like strict adherence to religion is all important.
Balancing between these two worlds puts him in the position of understanding that tradition and strick adherence to the rules are making him and his family unhappy.
First because he can not meet and connect to his birth father and second he can not make his future daughter in law family happy,because he occasionally drinks alcohol and listens to an old rock band.
In the meantime his nine year old daughter is running around with a plastic sword,saying things like "death to the infidels".
When finally he comes across evidence of the Imam past,that he was a rock singer 20 years earlier,he is able to prove to his fellow Muslim members that we,none of us,no matter how much we confess to be great religious followers,are all perfect all the time.
Basically being a part of religion is not just about the rules,its about how it affects the lives of those around us.
We have to not just live the laws but understand every thing we do as a cause and effect, and in the end if we are hurting the well fare of those around us,then we have to examine how far the rules are to be taken.
When the story finishes,he becomes friends with his mother Jewish neighbor,his son gets to marry the woman he loves and the daughter learns that she needs to be tolerant of others,even though she did not fully understand the things she was saying,since she was only nine,she began to start acting more like a little girl and less like a warrior.

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