YASH CHOPRA & BOLLYWOOD TO ZAKIR NAIK & HIJAB:
SUCH A SHORT JOURNEY
She wanted to be like Kareena Kapoor, and “could not wait
to act in a movie”. In her last year of college, she “got offers from casting
directors who would scout for faces in campuses and on Facebook”. But her
“well-to-do” Mumbai-based Kashmiri Muslim family would not allow her to take up
any film job unless it was offered by Yash Chopra’s YRF (Yash Raj Films). That
was in 2012.
Two years on, Murcyleen Peerzada, a 23-year-old Kashmiri
woman based in Mumbai, does not idolise Kareena. She now dreams of “being like
Yasmin Mogahed”, an Egypt-born American preacher known for her talks and
articles on Islam.
There are other changes in Peerzada’s life. She has given
up her “Westernised, flamboyant” lifestyle. From a “crazy shopaholic” who would
lap up the “most expensive dresses and jeans”, she now wears an all-black
burqa. Speaking to The Indian Express over phone, she says, “During my last
trip to Dubai, I bought a lot of burqas; earlier, I’d shop for Western
clothes.”
Her social media profile pictures have gone from her
posing in glamorous tops to one in which she is draped in a hijab. All covered
up, Peerzada is now an orator with the Mumbai-based, Zakir Naik-headed Islamic
Research Foundation, and gives public talks on Islam in the city. Her last talk
was at a ladies-only conference in Srinagar.
What caused the sudden, drastic transformation in
Peerzada’s aspirations and lifestyle? The Islamic preacher, though, says the
change was anything but drastic. It began, she says, with Bollywood. Her
father, Feroze Peerzada, a wealthy businessman who “had known Yash Chopra for
the last three decades, since the days he wanted to be an actor” introduced her
to the late Yash Chopra & Bollywood to Zakir Naik & hijab: such a
short journey filmmaker in 2012. He offered her the job of an assistant
director on the movie Ek Tha Tiger.
“That, I took, as a stepping stone to becoming an actor.
I was fascinated with acting.” Then, she was signed up for YRF’s Shuddh Desi
Romance as a costume assistant director. But since the director Maneesh Sharma
likes to take up newcomers for his movies, he asked her to do a screen test.
“When I faced the camera, I suddenly felt exposed, emotionally and physically,
even though I was wearing a salwar kameez. I felt vulnerable and uncomfortable.
I just got up, and said, ‘I don’t want to do this,’” she says.
After some introspection, she realised that “actors are
always so exposed” and texted Yash Chopra’s son, filmmaker Aditya Chopra, that
she has changed her mind about acting. “I didn’t even want to be an assistant
director any more. It’s too hectic a job. What’s the point if you don’t want to
be an actor any more?” she says. She then decided to become a costume stylist
and began working with designer Manish Malhotra. Then, in October 2012, Yash
Chopra passed away. “He was my mentor, and when he died, I felt I lost a big
support. The idea of death shook me. I started questioning life. I wanted to
look beyond singing, dancing and all that rubbish. What is the purpose of this
life, I started thinking,” she says.
Peerzada quit her work with Malhotra, and sat at home for
three-four months. “I was depressed. All my friends were being launched in the
film world. And here I was, giving up all opportunities,” she says. Then, she
saw a file of papers gathering dust in her home. “It was lying around in our
home for six years. Someone had come and given that file to us, and we never
bothered to look it up,” she says.
That evening in early 2013, she finally looked it up. It
was a transcript of a video of Zakir Naik on the topic ‘Women in Islam’. “I was
not religious. I would pray only occasionally. But this file gripped me. I
finished reading it that evening itself,” she says. That helped her find her
“purpose in life”.
friends with the righteous people, the company that will
guide you to the right side.” Peerzada, in line with her lectures, has cut off
with all her “partying, clubbing friends”.
Though Peerzada, who is doing her Masters in Islamic
Studies from the Islamic Online University in Qatar, says she focuses on the
“spiritual aspects” of the religion, and “has no say on who wears what”, some
of her posts on Instagram suggest otherwise. “They (the media) reduce women to
objects that satisfy men and cause only a negative impact in people’s life
including social networking sites. All the girls should learn to value
themselves and their bodies. Cover up for the sake of Allah! Your body and also
your character… My friends aren’t the girls who display themselves to the world,
my friends are the girls who say they believe in Allah and prove it everyday.
They’re the kinds that will Insha Allah reunite with me in jannah. Their goal
isn’t ‘boys, parties and fashion’. Their goal is jannah.”
Peerzada feels that young Muslims are “bombarded with
Westernisation”. “Half the songs we listen to and hum support a swag lifestyle.
You know, like Kanye West’s song I am a God.” Her other issue with young
Muslims is that they “don’t understand the meaning of the Quran because they’ve
only read it in Arabic”. “We need to connect to the youth, speak in their
language, be like some online preachers who are so joyful and approachable,”
she says.
It seems she is on that path to “connect to the Muslim
youth”. She writes in a post on Instagram: “Yesterday there was a musical
concert in Kashmir 15 minutes away from our conference which was attended by
Bollywood actors Sohail Khan and Suniel Shetty. For Kashmir, that’s something
rare. We were asked to move our conference so that we may be able to pull a
crowd. But look at Allah’s greatness, we gathered a crowd of 4,000 people and
the concert a crowd of 200.” In a video she posted, Kashmiri women are haggling
to shake hands with Peerzada, dressed in a shimmering black cloak. “I was
walking in a street in Mumbai, and five young burqa-clad girls came to me and
said that they recognise me as someone who’s give a public talk,” she says.
“I researched online and watched YouTube videos of Nouman
Ali Khan and Yasmin Mogahed. I felt very enlightened and wanted to be like
them,” she says. But she first needed to learn about religion. So, in March
2013, she enrolled for a course at IRF, under the tutelage of Farha Naik, the
wife of Zakir Naik, “the most accurate researcher”. “I am doing their most
advanced course in order to become an IRF orator,” she says. Giving talks at
the IRF centre in Mumbai is a part of her course. She has delivered close to 10
lectures so far and, on August 10, she organised an ‘Islamic peace conference’
in Srinagar with the help of her father, “who has been supportive of and is
inspired by” her transformation.
Her tweets are usually re-tweets of Islamic scholars, and
most are spiritual, asking people to turn to Allah to solve problems in their
lives. “I don’t believe in teaching extremism. I have a very liberal approach
towards religion. Angry speeches are not going to eventually appeal to the
young, only love and wisdom can. Islam is a religion in controversy, and it
needs youngsters like us to reach out to young Muslims in a humourous, light
manner. American preacher Nouman Ali Khan cracks jokes in between his talks.
That’s how it should be,” she says.
None of Peerzada’s talks are up on YouTube, but on
Instagram, where she goes by the username ‘turntoallah’ and has 19,000
followers, she has posted 10-15-second videos of the Srinagar conference. In
one, she says, “Nobody forced me. I started wearing the hijab on my own. I have
never felt so strong and liberated in my life.”
In another clip, she says, “I don’t want to be a
seductress, calling people to the wrong things, which is why I left and I think
that is the best decision I’ve ever made in my life.” One video has her saying,
“Be
friends with the righteous people, the company that will
guide you to the right side.” Peerzada, in line with her lectures, has cut off
with all her “partying, clubbing friends”.
Though Peerzada, who is doing her Masters in Islamic
Studies from the Islamic Online University in Qatar, says she focuses on the
“spiritual aspects” of the religion, and “has no say on who wears what”, some
of her posts on Instagram suggest otherwise. “They (the media) reduce women to
objects that satisfy men and cause only a negative impact in people’s life
including social networking sites. All the girls should learn to value
themselves and their bodies. Cover up for the sake of Allah! Your body and also
your character… My friends aren’t the girls who display themselves to the
world, my friends are the girls who say they believe in Allah and prove it
everyday. They’re the kinds that will Insha Allah reunite with me in jannah.
Their goal isn’t ‘boys, parties and fashion’. Their goal is jannah.”
Peerzada feels that young Muslims are “bombarded with
Westernisation”. “Half the songs we listen to and hum support a swag lifestyle.
You know, like Kanye West’s song I am a God.” Her other issue with young
Muslims is that they “don’t understand the meaning of the Quran because they’ve
only read it in Arabic”. “We need to connect to the youth, speak in their
language, be like some online preachers who are so joyful and approachable,”
she says.
It seems she is on that path to “connect to the Muslim
youth”. She writes in a post on Instagram: “Yesterday there was a musical
concert in Kashmir 15 minutes away from our conference which was attended by
Bollywood actors Sohail Khan and Suniel Shetty. For Kashmir, that’s something
rare. We were asked to move our conference so that we may be able to pull a
crowd. But look at Allah’s greatness, we gathered a crowd of 4,000 people and
the concert a crowd of 200.” In a video she posted, Kashmiri women are haggling
to shake hands with Peerzada, dressed in a shimmering black cloak. “I was
walking in a street in Mumbai, and five young burqa-clad girls came to me and
said that they recognise me as someone who’s give a public talk,” she says.
