Ridley Scott, Islam and political correctness

Robert Spencer:

The Crusades are hot, and Ridley Scott (director of Alien) is about to make them hotter. “Muslims,” gushed the New York Times after an advance showing of the new blockbuster, “are portrayed as bent on coexistence until Christian extremists ruin everything. And even when the Christians are defeated, the Muslims give them safe conduct to return to Europe.” Sir Ridley, according to the Times, “said he hoped to demonstrate that Christians, Muslims and Jews could live together in harmony — if only fanaticism were kept at bay.” Or, as Green put it, the movie is intended to move people “to be more tolerant, more open towards the Arab people.”

Bent on coexistence, eh? That’s right: the Kingdom of Heaven script invents a group called the “Brotherhood of Muslims, Jews and Christians.” A publicist for the film elaborated: “They were working together. It was a strong bond until the Knights Templar cause friction between them.” Ah yes, everything was all right until those “Christian extremists” spoiled everything.

Kingdom of Heaven is designed to be a dream movie for those guilt-ridden creatures who believe that all the trouble between the Islamic world and the West has been caused by Western imperialism, racism, and colonialism, and that the glorious paradigm of Islamic tolerance, which was once a beacon to the world, could be reestablished if only the nasty white men of America and Europe would back off. A dream movie for the PC establishment, except for one little detail: it isn’t true.

Professor Jonathan Riley-Smith, author of A Short History of the Crusades and one of the world’s leading historians of the period, called the movie “rubbish,” explaining that “it’s not historically accurate at all” as it “depicts the Muslims as sophisticated and civilised, and the Crusaders are all brutes and barbarians. It has nothing to do with reality.” Oh, and “there was never a confraternity of Muslims, Jews and Christians. That is utter nonsense.”

Professor Jonathan Philips, author of The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople, also dismissed the film as history and took issue with its portrayal of the Crusader Knights Templars as villains: “The Templars as ‘baddies’ is only sustainable from the Muslim perspective, and ‘baddies’ is the wrong way to show it anyway. They are the biggest threat to the Muslims and many end up being killed because their sworn vocation is to defend the Holy Land.”

Nor does Kingdom of Heaven take any notice of the historical realities of Christians and Jews who lived under Muslim rule. They were never treated as equals or accorded full rights as citizens, and always suffered under various forms of institutionalized discrimination and harassment.

News and Blogosphere:

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