Kigdom of Heaven
Kingdom of Heaven is a good action movie, very pleasant to watch, with a lot of "arrangements" with the historical truth, as so much as a novel of Dumas, but I've never found it disturbing.
But its success in Arab countries and the interviews of the Syrian actor who plays Saladin set teeth on edge, while Kurds in Syria fight to exist within a state that they did not chose .
Extract from Ghassan Massoud's interview in the Daily Star :
" "Everything in Saladin's own life is also my philosophy," says Massoud. "My culture is that of Saladin. My religion is the same religion and I speak the same language, have the same geography and the same history. "
" Saladin was an example for the Muslim hero who returned to Arabs and Muslims their pride and their dignity ".
" I was there to give the West a good image about Islam, about the Arabs, about Saladin - this huge leader," he explains. "They need to make revisions about their information about Arabs and Islam."
In fact, in the movie, we can not see one single Kurdish emir, no more than one Turkish warrior in Saladin's army, though it was mostly composed by Kurds, Turks, and Mamluks of various Caucasian origins... Saladin and his family are shown as pure Arabs...
We can notice that in the Daily Star the words "Kurd, Kurdish" never appear. They need to make revisions about their information about Saladin, Kurds and Islam."
posted by Sandrine Alexie @ | Permalink 
