vice and videos 135Shaheed and Judah! both feature religious showstoppers. Shaheed
has three song-and-dance routines showing women and men dressed in
proper white Muslim garments, chanting in praise of the martyr, and
begging A llah to have mercy on him. The religious legitimacy of these
sequences is stressed by the use of the bandir drum, which is associated
with Sufi Islam and therefore has religious connotations. Judah! has a
song-and-dance sequence (though dance is rather reduced to walking)
in which the Muslim hero, Anwar, manages to get the pagan heroine,
Judah, to open up her heart not only to his love but also to the love of his
religion: “Judah, stop worshiping this idol / Come, let us worship A llah /
I am following Him / If you will also follow Him / I will surely marry you
/ Believe that A llah is the One and Only / Don’t say there are two [Gods] /
Stop this worship even if it is your custom / If you will follow Him / A llah
will never leave you / Repent! Allah is forgiving / And He is beneficent
/ He forgives us our sins / He is your Creator / And He will surely not
ignore you” (my translation).
Another religiously inspired type of showstopper is modeled on reli-
gious sermons and reflects the reformulation of filmmaking as preaching.
These showstoppers interrupt the narrative flow with lengthy, didactic
monologues. A sequence of Shaheed may serve to illustrate this point:
after the first neophyte has succeeded in converting several of his fellow
tribesmen to Islam, the pagan king responds by putting up a fight. On
receiving news of these events, the imam of the Muslim community calls
on his followers one night. The scene focuses on the figure of the imam
who is captured in medium-close and close shots as he delivers a sermon.
Inserts of footage showing members of his intra-filmic audience listening
to him serve to draw video film viewers into the scene. The viewers thus
become part of the imam’s congregation, and what he preaches to them
applies equally to those sitting in front of the screen. The imam opens with
a lengthy prayer in Arabic and then goes on to tell his followers that since
their brothers in faith are under duress, it is their duty to come to their
brothers’ rescue, even if they are few in number and lack weapons. By refer-
ring to the Battle of Badr, which is mentioned in the Koran (3:123–125) and
was the first battle victoriously fought against the army of the idolatrous
Meccans by Mohammed and his small number of followers, the imam
explicates that true believers and those who fight for the cause of Islam