You don’t really know much about Islam do you.

semloh on September 7, 2008 at 5:35 PM

I know plenty. The Ottoman empire was ineffective at containing piracy and slvery. The west took care of that problem in the muslim world.

The Israelis have contacts, agents, and moles in most levels of the maze that they face.

We took those cards off the table the last time the libs had an enraged and empowered bobsled course. The defanging of CIA’s humint operations in the ’70s and caving to the Iranian “revolution” by Carter are the two things that convinced the region we could be hit hard and not hit back hard enough to matter. The young studs of Pan-Islamic nationalism honestly think we will not have the will to face them for more than 10-15 years.

I disagree, but I also think we should use about triple the ruthlessness and about 1/3d the resources and about 1/100th the platitudes.

The region grasps power, and a nuclear Iran will sooner or later flex hers.

part of the reason all the “let Barry win for the GOP’s future health” types tickle me pink.

Barry ain’t gonna do anything to a nuclear Iran but stammer and go Neville.

sven10077 on September 7, 2008 at 5:44 PM

This is such an American view of human nature. Well said. I agree with you.

Loxodonta on September 7, 2008 at 5:44 PM

that is the base human condition if all is left to its own devices.

These people voluntarily deny human nature in the pursuit of black rock’s approval.

I wish I felt differently and two years ago I did.

Now I just want what we need not to pay the price for a “freedom” I fear they value as much as an ill tossed empty beer can.

sven10077 on September 7, 2008 at 5:48 PM

By it’s very definition luck is not something to count on. Counting on luck does not usually end well for those who do so. More than a little like counting on Hope and Change.

semloh on September 7, 2008 at 5:51 PM

You are deliberately misunderstanding me and I was quite clear. I do not support our propping up of Karzai. We are in the position of pretending we are a force for the enlightenment of ‘ghani and aiding them in enacting western notions of civil rights.

Karzai was going to kill this Afghani refugee who converted in Germany to Christianity saying to his family:the Christians are at peace and capable of love we simply do not know. Allied forces were enraged that they were propping up a “president” who would kill a man for his beliefs based on Shariac based law.

It is not a healthy mix, and I absolutely agree that “hoping” “change” will have taken hold and that “luck” will keep it from happening again are a poor plan.

Better to stabilize, accept they do not want what is offered, withdraw such overblown support and withdraw.

The thing is that we now have Iran surrounded or at a minimum flanked so it will not happen.

Allow me to be clear:

1) I do not hate Muslims to the degree I want them smote simply for existing

2) I do not think we can “give” them democracy or a bill of rights-not always my view

3) we must stay engaged in the interests of stability a non unified Muslim world is far preferable to a unified one

4) the United States must outgrow its hesitance to use methodology that did just fine in the era between 1898 and 1978.

I am past caring what invective I get for my non-pc views on the issue.

sven10077 on September 7, 2008 at 6:00 PM

- The Crusades (God told all us European Christians to kill all the heretics in that city over there)
- The Inquisition (God told all us European Christians to go kill all those pagans)
- The Salem Witch Trials (God told us American Christians us to kill us some more pagans)

Homework assignment: Define the difference between heretic and infidel.

Damiano on September 7, 2008 at 6:05 PM

*sigh*

You do grasp that the Crusades were a defensive struggle yes?

What I am saying is that Africa was no more “Muslim” then than Copenhagen is “Muslim” now. Quite the contrary Islam destroyed several thousand Christian churches on its way to the Holy Land and was hardly a “goodwill ambassador”.

I am not defending any excess in the crusades but this PC driven hogscum that “Christianity just went crazy one day and lashed out at the poor Muslims* is junk history.

*as seen on TV and Hollyweird

Look I have an old epic post on the topic….

wait one.
This was a movie review in another place I once hung out I made on the topic of PC, the Crusades, and modern guilt

The “pc” factor of ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ had more to do with the tone it took with the two sides, and its underlying preachiness on ‘tolerance’. The Crusades, on either side, were about anything BUT tolerance it was about ‘belief’. Turning the saga of the waxing and waning of the fortunes of Christianity vis a vis Islam into some XXIst century screed on “we are all just the same’ would be like trying to remake “Ghandi” with the crew of the recently released “Ringer” as production leads….yeah it can be done, but does it make sense?

Errors that come to mind off the top of my recollection.

1) horrid grasp of geography-Messina was NEVER the “gateway to the middle east”

Sicily is Sicily the following were the more common points of departure.

Genoa, Venice and Naples-big deal?

Well sort of but I’ll elaborate in a few on why little things add up to big ones.

2) The “100 year truce” between the Papal and Muslim armies is a figment of their imagination. The warfare throughout the 12 th Century was as incessant as was possible at the time. Depicting the Templars as “Neocon warhawks” does a disservice to them as they were formed in the spirit of the Knights Hospitalier, the various orders were a response to a more militant policing of the Holy land by the Muslim occupiers.(and yes they WERE occupiers at the time)

3) Sir Balian is so distorted as to be unrecognizable. This is truly akin to the hatchet job Costner did to the legend of Robin Hood. Distortion of this severity belies “honest mistakes” or “poetic license”.

He was not a blacksmith, his wife did not commit suicide, and he was not illegitimate, nor raised as a commoner. His father, Balian the Old (not Godfrey as in the movie), had three sons, all legitimate: Hugh, Baldwin and Balian. Balian never had to travel to the Holy Land, because he grew up as part of the nobility there. Balian was married to royalty long before the events portrayed in the film, and he was not at all romantically involved with the Princess Sybilla.

Balian is shown as borderline agnostic, although according to records it is clear that Balian was a dedicated Christian who took his faith very seriously. He did not desert the defence of the Holy Land following the fall of Jerusalem. Far from returning to France, Balian proceeded to Beirut in Lebanon which he helped fortify against Muslim invasion.(and thus allowed the heavy Christian presence there that persisted until the 20th century) He was present with Richard the Lionhearted at the signing of the peace with Saladin, which secured safe passage for Christian pilgrims and recognised crusader control over the 90 mile stretch of coastline from Tyre to Jaffa.(hardly a “total defeat”)

4) Saladin is more like Alladin

According to Scott, the real hero in the story is the famous Muslim general, Saladin (1138 – 1193). Although a great warlord and unusually chivalrous for the Muslims of the period the film has entirely accepted and even somehow managed to embellish the legends about Saladin beyond what the historical record would support. A Muslim Kurd from Northern Iraq Saladin was raised in a privileged family and was very ambitious.(wow sounds like the Muslim version of *gasp* Crusading royalty) Aged 14 he joined his uncle’s military staff, and at 31 followed him to Egypt where his uncle was Grand Vizier. When his uncle died two months later, Saladin seized power, defeated competing Muslim leaders and started a dynasty which established Egypt as the major Muslim power in the Middle East.

Far from “having war forced upon him”, Saladin initiated the conflict by declaring a Jihad against the Christians. He swept throughout Palestine capturing more than 50 crusader castles in two years. At the battle of Hattin on 4 July 1187 Saladin’s army defeated the Christians on the shores of Lake Tiberius (the Sea of Galilee) (although in the film this battle is depicted as in waterless desert) Far from being the magnanimous victor depicted in modern legends and this film, Saladin was a ruthless general who had thousands of Christian prisoners beheaded in cold blood – including after the battle of Hattin.(none of this is to say anything other than a realistic portrayal “down the middle” would have shown the atrocities of the Muslims as well as the more Mercenary Crusaders)

Saladin is shown being most gracious in allowing the defenders of Jerusalem safe passage. In fact after the negotiated surrender of Jerusalem, which the Patriarch of Jerusalem initiated, Saladin demanded that every man, women and child in Jerusalem pay a ransom for his or her freedom or face the grim prospect of Islamic slavery. In order to save the lives and liberty of the poor people who could not afford the heavy ransom demanded by Saladin, Balian paid out of his own resources the ransom required for those who could not afford it.(hardly the actions of a bastard blacksmith who would have lacked the “credit” to do so)

5) willful distortion of the methodology and theology of the two sides when ruling…

The theology in the film is also all wrong. The film depicts some monk(possibly depicting a legendary cannibalistic Monk) standing by the roadside repeating: “To kill an infidel is not murder it is the path to heaven!” Any mainstream student of the Bible would be able to tell you that neither the concept nor those words appear anywhere in the Christian Bible. However, as any student of the Quran should be able to inform you(sans Taqqiya), that is exactly what the Islamic doctrine of Jihad teaches.(er um sorry it is “internal struggle” my friend-take the Taqqiya)

Early in the film as Muslims bow in prayer towards Mecca, Balian comments: “You allow them to pray?” A knight sneers and answers: “As long as they pay their taxes!” In fact the crusaders never required any extra taxes of Muslims in order to allow them to pray. That is the Islamic doctrine and practice of Jizya. Modern Muslim governments require Jizya – tribute taxes – of dhimmi’s (Jews and Christians under their Islamic rule and the cynic in me thinks one day in Europe Secular Humanism will have its own form of Jizya)

Before the crusaders march out to the disastrous battle of Hattin, the film has one knight declaring “The army of Jesus Christ cannot be beaten.” However, there is no such doctrine in the Bible, or in Christian theology. It is in fact Islamic dogma that no Muslim army can never be defeated by an infidel army. This Muhammad asserted on the authority of Allah himself. (I am *certain* that OBL and his merry band of n’er’dowells are even as I type this trying to figure out a way to spin US successes as “defeats for the Great Satan”).

The Crusades were the beginning of the Christian “pushback” against Marauding Jihadis who has scraped together a very impressive winning streak in their own “crusading”. The Papal armies failed to secure the holy land, but made ferocious inroads in Spain and the Alps when one takes the 500 year period of the 12th to the 17th century. Far from being the “poor noble savages” aka Hollyweird Indian tribes the Muslims were a fearsome power heading for a period of decline due to their own doctrinairianism-for all the bitching and whining of Clerical interference in secular matters the Christian lands were heading away from religious domination of the arts and sciences ever so slowly as the Muslim world was increasing its own piety.

6) “agnosticism” in general in the 12th century….

Scott cannot resist the temptation to engage in anachronistic juxtaposition as regards his own *faith*, “Balian is an agnostic, just like me,” intones Scott. Of course there was no such thing as agnosticism in the 12th Century amongst Papal crusaders. The word “agnostic” was a 19th Century invention in its modern usage.

Anyone misunderstanding the motivations behind this movie need only remember Ridley Scott has been quoted as saying: Ridely Scott wrote:
“If we could just take God out of the equation, there would be no f… problem!”
Scott cannot really do much about “the God problem” in Islam-they kill people over the matter ask a Dutchman about it, BUT he can and does do a bang-up job giving Christianity a good shagging while issuing passes to Muslim excesses.(Guess the PTL Club needs to start offering its “death squads” a dental plan to get more motivated work from them…they are slacking)

7) The target audience

Walter Chaw – filmfreakcentral.net wrote:
“Kingdom of Heaven is a whole lot of nothing about O, you know, that thing that happened in olden times when a bunch of power hungry white men went a bit god-crazy and invaded the Middle East on a moral superiority kick. The gold wasn’t bad either ”

Bile like the above as regards the crusades is quite enlightening. It illustrates the pervasive ignorance of history that enables revisionist film makers like Scott to get away with such blatant distortions of reality. Karl Marx once said that “The first battlefield is the rewriting of history” and Scott seems to grasp this in a symbiotic relationship between the ignorant and the revisionist.

The entire paradigm of “evil Xian white doodz on a power kick for profit” falls on its face if one considers the logistics and losses involved. The vast majority of the crusaders were impoverished and financially ruined by the crusades(ask Lockesly about it). Crusaders through great sacrifice and personal expense(a Knight cost as much in likely purchasing power as a modern tank) left their homes and families to travel 3000km across treacherous and inhospitable terrain and the shortest crusade lasted 4 years.(many Crusaders had their estates seized for backtaxes by the regional royalty *this is the basis of the REAL legends of Robin Hood) Considering that only 10% of the crusaders had horses, and 90% were foot soldiers, the sheer fact of logistics is that the crusaders could not possibly have carried back enough loot to have made up for the loss of earnings and high expenses involved with these long crusades.(I guess they must have called up Fed-Ex and used the air mules or something…for “so much loot” there sure is a lack of artifacts in lower and mid houses collections)

8 ) “the real story”(well a more balanced one anyway)

The crusades of the Middle Ages were a reaction to centuries of Islamic Jihad and adventurism. In the first century of Islam alone Muslim invaders conquered the whole of the previously Christian North Africa destroying over 3200 churches – in just 100 years. In the first three centuries of Islam, Muslim forces killed Christians, kidnapped their children to raise them as Muslims(a practice maintained into the era of the Jannisairies), or compelled people at the point of the sword to convert to Islam.

Up to 50% of all the Christians in the world were wiped out or force-converted during those first three centuries of Islam.(and if one is going to play the anachronism game shouldn’t one acknowledge the “ethnic cleansing” that the Muslims were engaging in as well as the over-hyped rendition of Christian excess?) The Saracens desecrated Christian Churches and were severely persecuting Christians. Pilgrims were then prevented from visiting those places where their Lord was born, was crucified and raised from the dead. It was only after four centuries of Islamic Jihad that the crusades were launched as a belated reaction to the blatant Islamic Jihad(and this ONLY occured after the Muslims insisted on altering the pilgrimage from “hard” to “lethal”)

9) where did the Jihad go?

The writer and director obviously don’t understand the motivations behind the crusaders but apparently they do not understand the Islamic doctrine of Jihad either which the film makes no reference to. Considering that Jihad was the central threat that had lead to the reaction of the crusades, this omission is inexplicable. Kingdom of Heaven preoccupies itself with fictionalising and stressing crusader atrocities, but it ignores the pattern of the preceeding five centuries of genocide and aggression by Islamic armies.

None of the above is rendered as an exoneration of Christian excesses BUT to take a critical and wary eye of one side’s motivations and flaws and whitewash the other’s does speak to political correctness and motives other than “balance”. At the end of the day the cynic in me grasps that the real “motive” is “profit” not “prophet” and that for all the bluster levied Christians do not make a habit of honor killing these days. Scott could have pulled a Van Gogh had he made a balanced film.

Discretion is often the better part of valor with the non-believers when faced with people of harsher piety than their usual targets. Andy Bradley’s sig says it all.

all the best,
sven

sven10077 on September 7, 2008 at 6:28 PM