| FrontPageMag.com | By Robert Spencer | By Hugh Fitzgerald | Books | Jihad Watch | Robert Spencer | Islam 101 | Qur'an Blog |  |
|
|
||||||||||
|
|
More praise from Muslim groups for Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Dhimmitude. From AP:
LOS ANGELES - In these uneasy times, you'd think a Hollywood epic about the Crusades would spark a major revival of hard feelings over the medieval religious wars in the Middle East. Yet Ridley Scott's "Kingdom of Heaven" is hitting theaters in comparative quiet, without the sort of uproar provoked by President Bush's post-Sept. 11 "crusade" gaffe or Mel Gibson's crucifixion saga "The Passion of the Christ."
If you listen closely amid that comparative quiet, you can hear Khaled Abou El Fadl's reputation slipping down the drain.
There were uneasy rumblings among Arab groups that obtained an early treatment of the script a year or so ago. They found the film potentially fraught with stereotypes about 12th century Muslims fighting Christians for control of Jerusalem, negative images that might have inflamed anti-Muslim sentiment.The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee was among those worried groups, but half a dozen members came away greatly relieved after a "Kingdom of Heaven" screening arranged for them by Scott.
"It's one of the better representations of Muslims we've seen out of Hollywood," said Laila Al-Qatami, a spokeswoman for the Washington-based group. "We thought that he did a good job tackling a potentially volatile subject and avoided doing a simplified, stereotyped story of Muslim vs. Christian."...
For the real story of the Crusades, watch for my forthcoming book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam and the Crusades (Regnery), which is now in the loving hands of a Regnery editor and should be out this summer.
Posted by Robert at May 5, 2005 7:00 AM
Print this entry
| Email this entry
| Digg this
| del.icio.us
Excellent review on Ridley Scott's new film.
The Crusaders were right after all
By Christopher Howse
Daily Telegraph
(Filed: 04/05/2005)
On February 11, 1847, the Scala opera house in Milan, its stage fitted out with fantastic arabesque ogees, onion domes and filagree fretting (representing the harem at Antioch), echoed to wild applause at the premiere of Verdi's I Lombardi alla prima crociata (The Lombards on the First Crusade).
It was not so much the music that wowed the opera-goers, but the identification of Jerusalem, occupied by the cruel Saracens, with Milan, occupied by the cruel Austrians. Lombard nationalists saw themselves as Crusaders.
That was, obviously, an absurd projection of modern values on to a creaky historical framework. But it was no more absurd than Sir Ridley Scott's new film set in 1186, just before the Third Crusade. Kingdom of Heaven follows the fortunes of Orlando Bloom (Legolas in The Lord of the Rings) as a blacksmith's son handy with a sword in defence of Jerusalem.
Teen audiences who cheered on Legolas as he slaughtered hundreds by the bow in the vast battles of Middle Earth, are invited in Kingdom of Heaven to conclude that nothing is worth fighting for. Bloom's character, Balian, surveying a massacre in the Holy Land, declares: "If this is the kingdom of heaven, then God can keep it."
Sir Ridley explains: "Balian is an agnostic, just like me." Yet there were no agnostics in the 12th century. That might sound ridiculous, but the word "agnostic" is a 19th-century invention (1869), just like the word "homosexual" (1892). There were sex acts between men in the Middle Ages, just as men and women doubted their faith, but neither fact defined a personal ideology.
Sir Ridley's problem is that he links agnosticism and tolerance as joint forces of good in his film, and he makes true believers - either Muslim or Christian - baddies. That is an impossible historical pill to swallow. And - groan - the Knights Templar (with their baggage from The Da Vinci Code and The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail) become the "Right-wing or Christian fundamentalists of their day", in Sir Ridley's words.
"If we could just take God out of the equation," says Sir Ridley, like John Lennon in Imagine, "there'd be no f---ing problem." A more realistic view of history requires less retrospective fantasy and more brain work. It means forcing our heads round to see what motivated men and women centuries ago. Try thinking the unthinkable - that the Crusaders were right, and that we should be grateful to them.
The First Crusade won back Jerusalem (pro sola devotione, "for the sake of devotion alone", in the idealistic terms in which it was launched) from Muslim control in 1099, not as an isolated incident but as part of a centuries-long effort to roll back the map of territory overrun by warlike Islamic expansionism since the seventh century.
The jihad of Mohammed's followers first won the Arabian peninsula (killing or subjugating Jewish and Christian rulers and tribes) and its programme had no end but the conquest of the whole world under unified Islamic rule. There was no tolerant agnosticism there.
In response to this unparalleled strategy of aggression, the main "Crusade" developed not in the Holy Land but in Spain, taking nearly 800 years to expel the Moorish invaders. It was as if the French Resistance struggled for centuries to throw off German rule. Amid the confused warfare even the cultured but short-lived Caliphate of Cordoba (929-1016) was hardly the garden of peaceful co-existence generally supposed.
It takes no great counter-factual leap to see what would have happened if Crusaders had not fought back. Gibbon for once got it right when he imagined a Muslim England where "the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomet".
That, you might think, need not be so bad. But we wouldn't now be complaining how boring the election is. There would be no election and no free press in which to complain.
In Kingdom of Heaven, Saladin is portrayed as a gent, and so he was in a way. Saladin, a Kurd (belonging to an Indo-European language group, and no pan-Arabist), ruled the Islamic empire from Egypt. His prime success was as a general slaughtering Crusaders (as at Hattin, July 4, 1187); the Christian princes he captured were held hostage and sold for a ransom.
As a fighting man, Saladin was a mirror image of the ideal of the Christian knight. It is possible to reject cynically the very possibility of chivalry in a warrior. The Monty Python school of history paints any knight as a murderous mercenary.
The truth is that medieval Europe was a martial civilisation, which the Church futilely attempted to guide into the way of peace. But we are heirs to that martial civilisation. A knight is a fighting man. Sir Ridley Scott was dubbed with a sword.
![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/nav-commenters.gif)
at May 5, 2005 8:05 AM
"you can hear Khaled Abou El Fadl's reputation slipping down the drain."
-- from the article above
At www.scholarofthehouse.com the reputation of Khaled Abou el Fadl remains intact, and nothing will shake the faith in Khaled Abou el Fadl of those connected to that website, including, of course, Khaled Abou el Fadl.
Those wishing a somewhat different perspective need only google "Khaled Abou el Fadl" and "scholarofthehouse" and "jihadwatch."
at May 5, 2005 9:21 AM
Muslim groups praise 'Kingdom of Heaven.' Of course they do! The film is told from a Muslim point of view.
Ignoring the impetus of Christian rulers and their knights as well as the outrages committed in the name of Islam, the film has no basis in reality other than there were knights and Sacracens and it did take place in the Holy Land. It is a propaganda piece.
at May 5, 2005 3:09 PM
Cont. from above. It's is a propaganda piece reminiscent of the films made by the government to spur on the public to buy war bonds or to collect tin cans during WWII. One then wonders which side the filmmakers represent....Hmmmmmmmm.
Posted by: epg at May 5, 2005 3:11 PM
(Note: Comments on articles are unmoderated, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Dhimmi Watch or Robert Spencer. Comments that are off-topic, offensive, slanderous, or otherwise annoying may be summarily deleted. However, the fact that particular comments remain on the site IN NO WAY constitutes an endorsement by Robert Spencer of the views expressed therein.)