Posted on 04/08/2005 5:38:50 PM PDT by Pikamax
Crusades film 'will help Muslims' Kingdom of Heaven Orlando Bloom and Liam Neeson co-star in the film Two Arabic actors starring in a Hollywood film about the Crusades say it will improve Western understanding of Muslim world.
Kingdom of Heaven depicts a 12th century Muslim-Christian battle for Jerusalem during the Third Crusade.
Syrian actor Ghassan Massoud, who plays the Muslim leader Saladin, said the film would not reinforce old stereotypes as some had feared.
The Ridley Scott-directed movie also stars Orlando Bloom and Liam Neeson.
Big budget
Massoud also said Kingdom of Heaven would show the US the benefits of diplomacy over war in resolving Middle East crises.
"Saladin fights battles, but he also enters into dialogue. We want to show that dialogue can be much better than war," he said.
"Today, America has overwhelming force but it is as if they don't want to build a dialogue."
Kingdom of Heaven, with a budget estimated at $130m (£69m), is being tipped as one of the summer's biggest film releases.
Some religious figures have raised concerns that the film will fuel the idea of a clash of civilisations between East and West, and could increase Western animosity towards Islam.
'Positive' film
But Egyptian actor Khaled el-Nabawy, said: "We have Christians who think this movie is pro-Muslim and Muslims who think that this movie is pro-Christian.
"It will make both go and see the movie, which is positive for improving understanding.
"It's time for the West to know more about us."
"We are not terrorists. We are very civilised and our history is a witness to this."
The film, which was shot in Morocco and Spain, opens in the UK on 6 May.
Anything that helps the "muzzies" isn't worth seeing.
It's comical, in an Aristotelian sense. There is no truth until truth is discovered or made. It's what we do, operate the dialectic of truth. Asserting that America doesn't want to build a dialog is fallacious in many ways vis a vis an obviously vibrant dialog. Power and truth are parts of the same whole.
I understand it will show the Crusaders attempting to free Jerusalem from German neo-Nazis
print or say anything that sells tickets
No matter what their nationality, all actors are idiots.
The Crusades are a shameful issue for the Catholic church (by todays standards). I suspect this will just be yet another hollywood propaganda film vilifying the church for evil deeds done in the middle ages.
And not the history where their armies marched across Africa, Spain, into Southern France and north through the Balkans to the gates of Venice. Oh, that's right. They were just setting up the dialouge.
Whatever.
How is trying to defend Christians shameful?
No, he is referring to their wonderfully civilized way in which Islam took over the region by the edge of the sword, wherein people either became Muslims or were slain. Wow, what civility!! /sarcasm
The Alexander the Great of 2005. A Big Fat IslamoFascist Glorification Turkey.
Fitting that script writers now take the place of
true historians.
Anything that feeds the madness is welcome to Muslims...
even pernicious Hollywood.
Well that's good. I was worried the Crusaders would be depicted stereotypically as crude, barbaric, hypocritic, misguided rubes. Now we needn't worry about that.
The Crusades have been taught as, and are believed by most to be, a shameful episode in the history of the West (focusing on the Catholic Church in particular is not really just, since there was no OTHER Church BUT the Catholic Church in the West then...in other words, the shame - if there is any - falls on all Western Christians, since it was a series of wars by all of Western Christendom. Protestantism came half a millennium later. The Crusades are as much the history of Protestants as Catholics, and they are to be laid at the feet of Western Christendom as a whole, not just the modern Catholic Church). But I disagree.
It seems to me that there are two aspects of the Crusades, one of which was indeed shameful, and the other of which was morally correct and proper.
The shameful part was the sack of Constantinople in 1214 by Western knights. When the Crusaders used the opportunity of Crusade to attack Eastern Orthodox Christians, that was pure evil and shameful.
The war against the Muslims, by contrast, was neither shameful nor wrong.
First, the Muslims were the invaders.
Where did Christ live? Palestine.
Where did the Church first exist? Jerusalem, Antioch, Damascus, Alexandria: the Levant.
The Muslims were the invaders. The Crusaders were trying to take BACK Christian lands from Muslim invaders. It is just to make war to expel an invader who came and imposed his religion.
Medieval warfare was brutal, and the bloodshed of the war was excessive. That said, both sides were brutal in warfare: warfare with maces, swords, spears and bows and arrows is always going to be horrendous, no matter who is fighting it. WHY were the Crusaders there? The wrestle back Christian lands from Muslim invaders. That is just, and noble, and morally right.
Sacking other Christians was the part of the Crusades about which the West should be ashamed and make atonement. Fighting Muslims? It was the right thing to do.
I'll save my money and stay home and watch "24" reruns.
Jack Bauer got it right...
You're probably thinking of Vienna, not Venice.
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