In the midst of every hussle and approaches to watch Ayat-Ayat Cinta, then many assumptions are also being drawn, from the finest movie that does not include horror and sex, movie that endorse polygamy, into the movie which makes our Vice President came to watch it at Plaza Senayan and our President watched it at EX, (and couldn’t stop his tears from running).
I have my own stray of thought. I would see Ayat –Ayat Cinta (AAC)as a Halal movie to be seen. People see AAC not for the sake of seeing an Islamic religious movie. But, they come to see a love movie. I think, the package, which is a poster of very beautiful eyes from a face covered with burqa, being looked over by a man, over a fully barenaked-make up-ed face of a Christian woman who eventually converted to Islam, just adding the attraction why most of the people watch it.
This way, old couples do not need to see a love movie with additions of kissing scenes in 3 Hari untuk Selamanya, or without being worry that the husbands would look over the beautiful actresses in Otomatis Romantis, and make the actresses the star of their masturbation sessions. Do not need to see and overtly vaguely romantic imagination in Ada Apa Dengan Cinta, or in Ungu Violet. Or seeing a non-subtle, sharp, and witty dialogue in Monty Tiwa’s and Nia Dinata’s movies.
Seeing this, we could see that people are longing for something that is nearest to themselves: religion. Thus, eventhough the places where the stories happen were so far away: Turkey, India, places with desert, people still identify themselves most to this: religion, cross over their identities as a woman, a man, as an Indonesian, as an Indonesian living in pluralistic country. People need to see people in the movie saying assalamualaikum, saying thank you in Arabic, wearing burqa, do five time players. People want to see themselves. People want to be acknowledged.
That is why, although AAC does not come thickly with religion issue, such as The Passion of the Christ --it was a romantic movie, a drama movie, to be exact, a pop movie. Religion was just made into the backgrounds.—people come see the movie because the background makes the movie become Halal and it makes people who identify themselves to the movie being acknowledged.
And, we have to admit that acknowledgement towards Islam just happened recently in global world. But, isn’t it funny that we oversize this acknowledgement in Indonesia nowadays instead the fact that Islam has always been the majority of the population? Hence, the majority of culture?
From what I can understand, it shows how our people also try to make it global. They are bolding this acknowledgement for the sake of their bandhood of brothers and sisters outside this country (Indonesia).
The problem occurs when the meat of the movie (polygamy, convert, naïve and not that good looking guy, desperate women who want to be with him) was considered as not Halal by some people. It becomes a bigger problem because the meat connected highly to its packaging: Islam. While some people are still debating the meat of the movie, still AAC is not a sterile tool to declare that that kind of Islam which could be acknowledged by larger populations.
P.S: But, we cannot deny that we all cry during a romantic movie (based on our definition of what is romantic, and now we could see clearly what SBY’s definition is).
