<i>Rahm</i> Without ‘ <i>Rahm</i> ’: Sufism and the Failure of Mercy in a Pakistani Film Adaptation of Shakespeare’s <i>Measure for Measure</i>

The filmmakers Ahmed and Mahmood Jamal have described Rahm , their 2016 Pakistani film based on Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure (1603), as a critique of fundamentalist elements in their native Pakistan. The Jamal brothers propose Sufism, a mystical form of Islam, as a means to transcend the limiting social and political elements that reign in the quasi-mythical version of Lahore they represent. The brothers emphasize one of Sufism’s central values, the notion of a forgiving deity. Indeed, the film’s title, ‘rahm’ translates into English as ‘mercy’. Sufism within the world of Rahm stresses otherworldliness, understanding, empathy and clemency. In this article, I will examine how, in Rahm , certain characters attempt to adhere to Sufi values to bring greater justice to the society the film depicts, and how the film thus uses Sufism to critique inflexible religious extremism, especially in matters of sexual conduct. At the same time, I will also argue that the filmmakers shed light on how difficult it is to fully embody an idealistic notion of Sufi values. For when it comes to his own desires, the film’s enlightened Sufi magistrate’s blind spot to gender inequity competes with, and even obscures, his newfound capacity for wisdom and grace. So, while the film is superficially a triumphal story in which Sufi-inflected ‘rahm’ wins out over a harsher, punishment-laden theocratic society, its complexly rendered ending suggests that the title’s value is at best imperfect, and at worst ironic, especially for the women who remain vulnerable to the kind of patriarchal power structures that have traditionally enclosed women across time, religions and regions.