Review of Takva

"Taqwa" is one of those Islamic jargon which can only be loosely translated into English. It is the Islamic concept of "God-consciousness".Someone having "taqwa" has the constant awareness of God's omnipresence in his life and he is supposed to be in total submission to God.The movie tells the story of Muharrem,a simple minded,unobtrusive middle-aged man who lives alone.While he runs the errands in the place he works, he spends most of his time in the local dargah(a Sufi shrine built over the grave of a revered religious figure)by engaging himself with total abstinence and dhikr(a form of devotion,in which the worshiper is absorbed in the rhythmic repetition of the name of God or his attributes)Muharrem's uneventful life starts to take a bit different course when he is given to duty(by the leader dervish of the religious brotherhood)to take care of the financial matters like collecting the monthly rents for the religious order. Muharrem is obliged in the very matter he refrains from. He finds himself obliged to engage in worldly matters.The more he gets himself into this the more he vacillates because he notices that the religious order rented a shop to the men who take alcohol and in another example he oscillates to take the rent from a family who has barely any money. The more he gets himself in money matters the more dreams he has about sex alcohol and money. He wet-dreams of sleeping with the same woman every time.A day when he really feels suffocated he takes to the streets and he sees the same woman in a jewelery store. When he follows her, he notices that she is the very daughter of the dargah leader. At the end of the movie we see him pretty numb in his bed. Taqwa sheds a light on the inner-workings of political Islam. Religious brotherhoods surely provide unity among Muslims but most of these brotherhoods seek after only their interests. This is more like a business industry. They own shops, flats, private schools, courses. They do shopping at the places they own, they buy their own products, they commercialize their own system. The rest is actually the romance. Not so many of them really seek after total obedience to God or something. They just believe they do. That does not make them so harmful or something but this does not make them so different from their non-religious counterparts (either)like atheistic, uber-leftist-mason counterparts.