'Kingdom of Heaven' seen as fair to Muslims, hard on Christians

Published: 2005-05-11

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Although Ridley Scott's "Kingdom of Heaven" revisits the medieval Christian Crusades against Muslims in the Holy Land, it portrays Muslims fairly and is not likely to stir up anti-Muslim feeling in the West, Catholic scholars involved in that field said. On the other hand, they found that the film stereotyped Christians as violent. The main message of the movie is a post-Enlightenment opposition to violence carried out in the name of religion, said Father Leo D. Lefebure, a theology professor at Jesuit-run Fordham University in New York and author of "Revelation, the Religions, and Violence." He said the film's portrayal of the warrior leader Saladin "as a noble Muslim who is generous ... is not completely accurate to the historical record, but it's not completely unfounded, either. There were Crusaders who really respected him as humane and cultured." By contrast, "the portrayal of the Templars (a Catholic military order) is pretty bad," he said.

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