Posted on 05/06/2005 8:41:56 PM PDT by GulliverSwift
All Ridley Scott wanted to do was make a movie about a medieval knight....
Months before that, Jonathan Riley-Smith, an ecclesiastical professor and Crusades expert at Cambridge University, had the opposite take. "It's Osama bin Laden's version of history," he told London's Daily Telegraph newspaper in January 2004. "It will fuel the Islamic fundamentalists..."
While his goal was balance, Mr. Scott admits the movie has a point of view: Religious fanaticism leads to pointless slaughter....
Also, that Christians started it.
"I think we did," Mr. Scott says, referring broadly to Western Christendom and echoing conventional 20th-century wisdom that the Crusades (a succession of battles and skirmishes running from 1095 to 1291) began as an act of Christian aggression — namely Pope Urban II's order to take back Jerusalem from Muslim Turks.
But that question — who started it? — isn't so simple.
After all, Thomas F. Madden points out, Muslim armies, by the time of the Crusades, had taken over two-thirds of the Christian world, including lands such as Syria and Turkey, the heart of the early church. Mr. Madden, a St. Louis University historian and author of "A Concise History of the Crusades," says Christians were fighting a defensive war, just as church creedalists said at the time.
Mr. Scott responds with realpolitik: "That's like saying the Indians have a right to take back the United States, and Australia belongs to the Aborigines. You may be right. ...Go ahead and try."...
Christians clearly bear the brunt of Mr. Scott and Mr. Monahan's anti-clericalism. Christian priests are depicted as doltish dogmatists, while the Kurdish warrior Saladin (played by Ghassan Massoud) is written as a sort of pluralist ahead of his time.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
I liked Ridley Scott's Gladiator movie, but that was not a Christian-bashing liberal movie.
I hope the movie studio, which spent millions of dollars on this movie, will experience a massive failure such as that endured by the makers of the homo movie 'Alexandar.'
I for one will not see it.
(BTW, I'm looking forward to Gladiator 2, unless it cheers on lions eating Christians in the Coliseum.)
I wouldn't mind an honest and objective movie about the Crusades, i.e., not covering up the bad stuff like the sack of Constantinople or the massacre in Jerusalem, but which also tries to understand the beliefs and thinking of the time, not just try to score points based on some contemporary political agenda. I guess this is not the movie I was hoping for.
Unfortunately, many people who go to see the movie will probably accept every little detail as fact.
(I have to admit, I myself knew and still know very little about the Crusades. Until recently, I had been taught that it was a war started by Christians to force Christianity on other parts of the world).
The first "crusade" was launched by Muslims.
From what I understand the extremists come off badly on both sides.
Saladin wasn't an extremist and isn't remembered by History as such. The Crusaders, many of whom burned Jews alive in Synagogues, were.
Thanks for the links.
"Saladin wasn't an extremist and isn't remembered by History as such. The Crusaders, many of whom burned Jews alive in Synagogues, were."
cite?
Cite what? Saladin is one of the most respected figures of the medieval world. As for the Jews being burned alive it's well documented in various places. Despite the efforts of people like Bernard of Clarivaux to protect them. It's one of the key events (Jews refusing to convert and being burned alive) in modern Jewish history.
Does ANYONE believe hollyweird types can do anything to show christianity as eeeeeeeevil and Islam as good?
They kowtow to islam pc advocates and poop upon any christianity positives.
Finally after 700 years the Muslims were expelled to North Africa by Ferdinand and Isabella, the same ones who sponsored Columbus's explorations.
"Cite what? Saladin is one of the most respected figures of the medieval world. As for the Jews being burned alive it's well documented in various places. Despite the efforts of people like Bernard of Clarivaux to protect them. It's one of the key events (Jews refusing to convert and being burned alive) in modern Jewish history."
Yes, cite a respected history of the period that states that the Crusaders burned Jews alive in the Lavent. I am not saying your wrong. I have not read that, and would like a cite, if, as you say, it is true.
Oh I'm not defending the Medieval Islamic Jihad. I just don't have much affection for the Crusaders. And according to that article the main 'Christian bashing' going on is showing Saladin as enlightened for his time (he was) and the many Crusaders as being zealots (they were).
Apparently the movie lacked perspective and the proper context.
Did it say that CAIR liked this movie?
Well that says it all.
It is Pro-Muslim tripe...
Saladin had taken counsel and laid down these ransom terms for the inhabitants of Jerusalem: each male, ten years old and over, was to pay ten besants for his ransom; females, five besants; boys, seven years old and under, one. Those who wished would be freed on these terms and could leave securely with their possessions. The inhabitants of Jerusalem who would not accept these terms, or those who did not have ten besants, were to become booty, to be slain by the army's swords. This agreement pleased the lord Patriarch and the others who had money ....
Source:
De Expugatione Terrae Sanctae per Saladinum, [The Capture of the Holy Land by Saladin], ed. Joseph Stevenson, Rolls Series, (London: Longmans, 1875), translated by James Brundage, The Crusades: A Documentary History, (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1962), 159-63
Copyright note: Professor Brundage informed the Medieval Sourcebook that copyright was not renewed on this work. Moreover he gave permission for use of his translations.
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/1187saladin.html
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