In my Social Studies class we watched a movie that went all out against muslims. It said "And we came to Jarusalem and we beheaded the mozlimz(their pronunciation)and the arabs. But their last forces pushed us out." I felt hate towards the nonmuslims with that. It had a lot more garbage in there about us. :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:
So Glorified is He and Exalted above all that they associate with Him, and in Whose Hands is the dominion of all things, and to Him you shall be returned.
(Sura Ya-Seen 36:83)
FILM ON CRUSADES COULD BECOME HOLLYWOOD'S NEXT BATTLEGROUND
NY TIMES, AUGUST 12 2004
By SHARON WAXMAN
LOS ANGELES, Aug. 11 - With bloody images of Muslims and Westerners battling in Iraq and elsewhere on the nightly news, it may seem like odd timing to unveil a big-budget Hollywood epic depicting the ferocious fight between Christians and Muslims over Jerusalem in the Crusade of the 12th century.
But 20th Century Fox is planning a release next year for "Kingdom of Heaven," a $130 million production by the Oscar-nominated director Ridley Scott, shot in Morocco with hundreds of extras, horses and elaborate costumes. The script, by William Monahan, is based on real characters of the three-century Crusades, including Balian of Ibelin, a Crusader knight who led the defense of Jerusalem in 1187, and the Muslim leader Saladin, who defeated him.
While the studio has tried to emphasize the romance and thrilling action, some religious scholars and interfaith activists who were provided a copy of the script by The New York Times questioned the wisdom of a big Hollywood movie about an ancient religious conflict when many people believe those conflicts have been reignited in a modern context.
"My real concern would be just the concept of a movie about the Crusades, and what that means in the American discourse today," said Laila al-Qatami, a spokeswoman for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in Washington.
She added: "I feel like there's a lot of rhetoric, a lot of words flying around, with prominent figures talking about Islam being incompatible with Christianity and American values. This kind of movie might reinforce that theme in the discourse." Not all of the people contacted by The Times were worried about the film's effect. The Rev. George Dennis, a Jesuit priest and a history professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, who was one of five experts provided with the script for "Kingdom of Heaven," said he was impressed by its nuance and accuracy. "Historically I found it pretty accurate," he said. "I can't think of any objections from the Christian side. And I don't think Muslims should have any objections. There's nothing offensive to anyone in there, I don't think."
But Khaled Abu el-Fadl, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who studies Islamic law, vehemently disagreed, calling the screenplay offensive and a replay of historic Hollywood stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims.
"I believe this movie teaches people to hate Muslims," he said. "There is a stereotype of the Muslim as constantly stupid, retarded, backward, unable to think in complex forms. It's really annoying at an intellectual level, and it really misrepresents history on many levels." Mr. Fadl argued that the movie would reinforce negative attitudes toward Muslims in America. "In this climate how are people going to react to these images of Muslims attacking churches and tearing down the cross and mocking it?" he asked.
Aside from the movie's specifics, the subject is a fraught one. Even the word "crusade" remains loaded. When President Bush initially called the war on terror a "crusade" after the 9/11 attacks, he was criticized by some for using a term that has long had anti-Muslim overtones. Meanwhile some Islamic experts who analyzed Osama bin Laden's motives after 9/11 suggested that he was trying to cast himself as a modern-day Saladin. And Saladin's name was invoked by Saddam Hussein's government to rally Muslims against the American-led invasion of Iraq. Mr. Scott said he was not concerned about disturbing the sensitivities of any religious group. The film "sounds like a Boy Scout ethic," he said in an interview last week, adding: "It talks about using your heart and your head, being ethical. How can you argue with that? There's no stomping on the Koran, none of that."
For a movie about holy war, "Kingdom of Heaven" has surprisingly little religious oratory, or even religious content. The only overtly religious figures are extremists: marauding Knights Templar on the Christian side and murderous Saracen knights on the Muslim side. Balian, the hero of the film, played by the British actor Orlando Bloom, is a French blacksmith drafted reluctantly into the Crusade in the wake of his wife's suicide. Once in Jerusalem, where the world's three monotheistic religions are depicted as coexisting, he falls in love with the king's sister.
After a massacre of Muslims by the Knights Templar, Saladin, played by Ghassan Massoud, goes to war. This leader is depicted as balanced and chivalrous, at least until he orders that no quarter be given in the ransacking of Jerusalem.
Jim Gianopulos, co-chairman of the Fox studio, said he did not think the film would be a source of controversy. "We're thrilled to have Ridley making this movie,'' he said. "After all, he is the master of the modern epic, and this is a story rich in scale, adventure, romance and action with a superb cast led by Orlando Bloom. From what we've seen, it will be one of the most exciting movie events of 2005."
Executives at Warner Brothers read the script and declined to share the financing of the movie with Fox, but Alan Horn, president of Warner Brothers, said the refusal had nothing to do with the topic. He said the studio had other period epics on its slate.
"I thought it was balanced, with different political views," Mr. Horn said. "It wasn't black and white, good and bad."
Nonetheless the battle scenes in the script are vast and violent. One of Hollywood's most acclaimed directors, Mr. Scott has created indelible tableaus of battle in movies like "Gladiator" and "Black Hawk Down."
In its many scenes of devastation, the script shows intransigence on both sides. "Will you yield the city?" the victorious Saladin asks Balian. He replies: "Before I lose it, I will burn it to the ground. Your holy places. Ours. Every last thing in Jerusalem that drives men mad." Near the end of the film the script describes the Muslim army as advancing on Jerusalem. Saladin says: "Not one alive. Not one," as the advancing soldiers cry, "Allah!" The script reads: "As the Muslim army of thousands advances at a run, ready to kill the Christians at a single rush, Balian looks to his left in the shield wall. The Saracen knights fire a sky-blackening volley of arrows and charge, screaming 'Allah.' This is their chance; they will take Jerusalem at this rush and are not afraid of martyrdom."
The Muslim army is hacked to pieces, and a crane shot reveals "Saracens tangled with Europeans inside the breech in the wall," the script says. "Hundreds of dead; thousands perhaps.''
The two university scholars who read the script did not agree on its historical accuracy. Father George said that the 12th-century Crusader state was, as shown in the film, relatively tolerant, and that Saladin did in fact order his troops to give no quarter in the fighting in Jerusalem, an order he later rescinded.
But Mr. Fadl said the Crusader state was by its nature discriminatory and oppressive of other religions. He said that the Muslim knights took the idea of granting quarter very seriously, and that the notion that Saladin would thank Balian for teaching him chivalry, as the script had it, was laughable.
"Pick up any book on chivalry, it's exactly the opposite," he said. "The whole idea of knighthood and chivalry came from Muslims and was exported to Europe." He noted, as did Father George, that at the time of this Crusade, science and scholarship were far more advanced in the Islamic world than in Europe.
Of course for Hollywood, controversy isn't necessarily bad. Mel Gibson's film "The Passion of the Christ" found itself at the center of a firestorm when Jewish groups, angered by his violent depiction of the Crucifixion, complained the movie was anti-Semitic. It nonetheless earned $609 million worldwide.
Various Crusade-era scripts have sparked interest on Hollywood back lots for decades, notably one that was being developed by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 1990's. Mr. Scott said he was asked to do that script and declined. "I wanted to do my own knight subject," he said, adding that he was studying the religious conflict when he and Mr. Monahan came up with the film's concept in 2002. "I try to make movies," Mr. Scott said. "I'm not a documentarian. When you've got 300 years to choose from, this was the most interesting conflict, which was a balanced one as well."
Whether moviegoers agree remains to be seen. "I think its going to cause a firestorm of criticism and free publicity in the op-ed pages," said Christy Lohr, the coordinator of the Multifaith Ministry Education Consortium in New York, an association of 12 theological schools.
"I imagine that's part of the appeal for Hollywood," said Ms. Lohr, who read the script. "It is cynical, but I think they enjoy stirring up a hornets' nest."
‘After this movie, there may be hate crimes committed’
BETH PEARSON March 31 2005
SEVERAL months have passed since Dr Khaled Abou El Fadl first read the shooting script for Sir Ridley Scott's forth-coming epic about the Crusades, Kingdom of Heaven, but he speaks as though his anger is fresh.
"There's no doubt in my mind people are going to come out of this movie disliking Muslims and Arabs more than they already dislike them," says the professor of Islamic law at the University of California.
"In my view, it is inevitable – I'm willing to risk my reputation on this – that after this movie is released there will be hate crimes committed directly because of it. People will go see it on a weekend and decide to teach some turbanhead a lesson." Scott has said he intended to make a film about a noble knight and settled on Balian of Ibelin, portrayed by Orlando Bloom. In 1187, Balian defended Jerusalem against the Muslim leader, Saladin, played by Ghassan Massoud, and lost. However, the religious context of Balian's story dominated discussion of the production and, as soon as the script for the £75m production became available, the New York Times passed copies to five experts on the Crusades, one of them Abou El Fadl.
One expert has defended the script, saying it contains nothing that should upset Christians or Muslims, but criticisms from others range from historical inaccuracies to character and cultural misrepresentations and claims of insensitivity to current perceptions of Islam in the western world. The criticisms were echoed when British experts attended a Kingdom of Heaven junket, during which Scott talked about the plot and its purported historical accuracy. Questions from the audience were not permitted, but Dr Jonathan Phillips, a member of the audience and a lecturer in history at Royal Holloway, University of London, knows what he would have asked. "The main problem is he's got this idea that the noble knight and Saladin could have made peace, but a few people wrecked that for secular motives such as greed," says Phillips, author of The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople. "He's got a religious subject and I think he's secularised it in part. He wanted to make a film about a knight as an icon. He's done that, but in a context where religion is saturating the concept of a knight in a Crusader context. "The question is whether it's an appropriate subject right now and whether he has done it in a way that is appropriate."
While academics acknowledge that a degree of artistic licence is to be expected with any big-budget Hollywood movie, many agree that the religious context of the Crusades warrants a careful depiction, given the current religious and political climate. Phillips believes that although Scott initially defended the accuracy of the film, he has begun to climb down as more and more criticisms emerge. Some of these are of little consequence; for example, Balian is portrayed as a blacksmith who becomes a knight. He was, in fact, according to Phillips, "born to the top table". The leper king, Baldwin, makes an appearance, in spite of having died two years earlier. However, others are seen to propagate stereotypes of Muslims that could have dangerous consequences, as Abou El Fadl predicts. "There's a single (Muslim) character who is human-like – Saladin, he has consciousness and awareness," he says. "There's another character who is a mad, ranting, raving, blood-thirsty lunatic, screaming 'jihad, jihad, jihad'. The rest of the Muslim characters are willing to die without any emotion."
Abou El Fadl says he anticipated this pattern of characterisation; that in any western film involving Muslims he has come to expect only one complex character surrounded by many simplistic others. He also predicted that Saladin would be portrayed as being conflicted about his Islamic identity, though not to the extent that the script suggested.
"This movie actually went a step further, which I found deeply, deeply offensive," says Abou El Fadl. "Despite the savagery of the Crusaders and despite their ability to commit massacres and pillage and rape [of which he acknowledges the Muslims were also capable], Saladin identifies with them and is nearly sympathetic towards them. In one of the most unbelievable scenes, though I don't know if it stayed in the movie, Saladin thanks the Crusaders for teaching Muslims chivalry."
Phillips agrees that the Muslim characters, bar Saladin, are under-developed. "From what I saw, they're not described at all. They 'howl and gabble', which are the twelfth-century terms used to describe them, and they're not really treated as individuals."
Some experts have identified problems with how Saladin – the one Muslim character the audience can empathise with as a human – conforms to the stereotype promoted by Scott in The Talisman, Saddam Hussein and former Syrian dictator Hafez Assad. Scott is acknowledged to have romanticised the Muslim leader, while Hussein and Assad commissioned statues of him to consolidate Arab Muslim identity (though he was a Kurd).
Phillips believes this "soft-focus" portrayal diverts attention from Saladin's motivation. "There's a layer in this movie that doesn't take on board that, although Saladin was an honourable man, his career was based on throwing the Christians out," he says. "His rise to power revolves around jihad, the holy war, so, while he can be treated as an individual, Christians were the enemies of his faith. He's rather more hard underneath than Scott's."
Abou El Fadl believes that, beyond individual characters, Muslim culture is overlooked and notes that, while the film includes sequences of Muslims jumping on crucifixes, little is communicated about the comparative sophistication of Islamic society at the time. "The historical record is established in that the Europeans find a superior culture invading it and learn to indulge in the luxuries the Muslims had become very good at enjoying," he says. "You don't even get a hint that there's an Islamic law that regulates warfare; that the slaughter of innocents is strictly prohibited in the Koran."
Abou El Fadl believes an opportunity to encourage understanding between Christians and Muslims has been missed, though he won't commit to saying whether he believes it is intentional. "I'm not a conspiracy-theory type, but the timing of this movie is most suspect," he says. "The film falls in the category of 'it's okay to invade these people, something good will come out of it'. Not only that, but the fanatics are better off dead because they want to go to heaven.
"This at a critical time when the logic of the white-man's burden is coming back through the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq and a lot of people are wondering if there is a civilisational showdown between Islamic and Christian culture."
So Glorified is He and Exalted above all that they associate with Him, and in Whose Hands is the dominion of all things, and to Him you shall be returned.
(Sura Ya-Seen 36:83)
actually , its really good. The director, ridley scot, presents Salahuddin as a nice, and humane character (the truth) and that he wanted to avoind all wars. but the christian king wanted war thats why slaughtered all muslims in Jeruselam. Its good.
“Do not argue with your Lord on behalf of your soul, rather argue with your soul on behalf of your Lord.” - Dhul-Nun
"It is the very pursuit of happiness that thwarts happiness." - Victor Frankl
So Glorified is He and Exalted above all that they associate with Him, and in Whose Hands is the dominion of all things, and to Him you shall be returned.
(Sura Ya-Seen 36:83)
I have watched the movie for educational purposes. I was curious how the Muslims were potrayed and if the movie passed or failed the historical accuracy test.
And unfortunaley, it did. I have observed many stereotypic and inaccurate scenes in the movie.
The cresent moon was used as a symbol for the Muslim flags. This is incorrect since Salahuddin Ayyubi (May Allah have mercy on him) never used that symbol but used the takbir ( Allahu akbar) as his symbol. Moreover, the cresent moon was never used by the Muslims at that period but was adopted by the Ottoman Muslims after they conquered Byzantium was was a few hundreds year later after the death of Salahuddin Ayyubi.
Second inaccuracy that I noticed was the most of the Crusaders were potrayed as "walking saints" whilst it's a known fact of history that they massacred the Muslims, the Jews and the Christians residing in Jerusalem. They campaigned a [Holy War] against the infidels including the heretics of Christianity and literally burned the Muslims, Jews etc. They mutilated the babies and raped the Muslim women. Their savagery acts has also been repeated by the Mogols. But that's an another story.
Salahuddin Ayyubi (May Allah have mercy on him) was potrayed fair and accurate for the most part. He was potrayed as a merciful ruler and the Mujahideens as merciful warriors. However, when they captured Salahuddin Ayyubi (May Allah have mercy on him)'s sister -- Salahuddin did not attack to rescue her. Instead he waited because his final dream was to re-capture Jerusalem that belongs to the Muslims. He re-united the Muslim armies and prepared to take back Jerusalem that belongs to Islam.
However, that wasn't shown in the movie, instead, the motive used in the movie for recapturing Jerusalem was to revenge his sister which is incorrect.
Also, the movie potrayed the Crusaders, when being attacked, as "resistance fighters" who were going to fight for the freedom of the inhabitants of Jerusalem -- yea right.
We all know this is far from the truth since they brutally massacred and oppressed the inhabitants of Jerusalem and that the only reason they fought for Jerusalem was for their false notion "that the city belongs to Christians"
It's also worthy to note that they showed in the movie the inhabitants (Christians, and a handful Jews and Muslims) of Jerusalem were trying to get ready to fight the Muslim armies.
The truth is that the handful Muslim and Jews where trying to help the Muslim armies in every possible way just like how the Jews helped the Muslim armies in Al-Andalus (Muslim Spain).
Lastly, when Salahuddin Ayyubi regained Jerusalem, he stated that anyone can stay and they will not be wronged and if they don't want to stay, they can freely go. He also declared that Jews may return to Jerusalem and hold pilgrimages to the Holy city whilst prior to the liberation, they were banned by the Crusaders.
The Spanish poet Yehuda al-Harizi, who was in Jerusalem in 1207 , described the significance for the Jews of the recovery of Jerusalem by Salahuddin Ayyubi :
(In A.D.1190) God aroused the spirit of the prince of the Ishmaelites [Salahuddin Ayyabi], a prudent and courageous man, who came with his entire army, besieged Jerusalem, took it and had it proclaimed throughout the country that he would receive and accept the entire race of Ephraim, wherever they came from. And so we came from all comers of the world to take up residence here. We now live here in the shadow of peace.
The German-Jewish historian of the Nineteenth Century, Heinrich Graetz in his Geschichte der Juden [History of the Jews], vol. 11, published in 1853, states that the Sultan, opened the whole kingdom to the persecuted Jews, so they came to it, seeking security and finding justice
I really enjoyed the visuals of this movie and the Muslim armies shouting Takbir. It really provoked you.
Also, when the Muslims started praying (more than 200k) whilst their enemies could easily take advantage of this.
So Glorified is He and Exalted above all that they associate with Him, and in Whose Hands is the dominion of all things, and to Him you shall be returned.
(Sura Ya-Seen 36:83)
I really want to see this film, we know there would be a bias but with kadafi saying we hear the takbir's being chanted really makes me want to see it more.
"Lo! the Hour is surely coming, there is no doubt thereof; yet most of mankind believe not." (Al-Ghafir:59)
I really want to see this film, we know there would be a bias but with kadafi saying we hear the takbir's being chanted really makes me want to see it more.
Takbeer was in the movie.. It had mistakes of course.. made us muslims look ok.. not much mention on it. But it made the crusaders look better than they deserve
If your mind would free itself from the governorship of your desires, the state would return back to it.
-- Ibnul Qayyim al Jawziyyah
Takbeer was in the movie.. It had mistakes of course.. made us muslims look ok.. not much mention on it. But it made the crusaders look better than they deserve
it made the defenders of jeruslem look better, not those who left jeruselam for Damascus
“Do not argue with your Lord on behalf of your soul, rather argue with your soul on behalf of your Lord.” - Dhul-Nun
"It is the very pursuit of happiness that thwarts happiness." - Victor Frankl
well as a movie, it was good but a bit violent I think.
a historical view, to me, Saladin was looking cruel. and it is not a good watch for any non muslims who don't know muslims and about crusades.
and the usual scenes of english movies shouldn't be there in such a movie at least.
and to my knowledge, Saladin didn't use fire but big rocks thrown by "Dabbabs"(that's the term for that weapon).
but I would like to read more about it. any online sources?? I do have a book, History of Islam by Akbar Shah Najeebabadi but not much detail is given about this. pls care to share the knowledge.
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