Khuda Kay Liye

Khuda Kay Liye (In the Name of God) is, by any measure, the most important film in modern Pakistani history. Before its release in 2007, the Pakistani film industry was essentially dead — Lollywood had collapsed under competition from Indian films and the Islamization of public culture under Zia-ul-Haq. Shoaib Mansoor, a television veteran, gambled everything on a film that tackled radicalization head-on.

The film follows two brothers: Mansoor (Shaan Shahid), a liberal musician who is arrested by American authorities in Chicago on false suspicion of terrorism, and Sarmad (Fawad Khan, in his film debut), who falls under the influence of a radical cleric in Lahore and is manipulated into a forced marriage with an Afghan immigrant.

The climactic courtroom scene — in which a mufti is asked whether Islam permits forced marriage and is forced to admit, on the record, that it does not — was electric for Pakistani audiences. Here was a mainstream film saying publicly what many Pakistanis felt privately: that religion had been weaponized by men who understood neither its text nor its spirit.