Crusades movie walks tight religious tightrope
AFP, May, 2005
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LOS ANGELES (AFP) — Ridley Scott's crusader epic, "Kingdom of Heaven," gets its US release Friday, amid concerns that the film could fan religious tensions with its portrayal of the 12th century Christian-Muslim battle over Jerusalem.
In a world changed by the September 11, 2001 attacks and with US troops fighting in Iraq, the big-budget Hollywood take on the Crusades was always going to be a sensitive undertaking.
The very word "crusade," with its connotation of religious conquest, is troublesome, as President George W. Bush found out when he was widely chastised for using it to characterise the post-September 11 war on terror.
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Even before shooting began on Scott's 130-million-dollar project in January last year, some academics who saw the script accused it of containing gross historical inaccuracies.
Cambridge University Professor Jonathan Riley-Smith, Britain's leading authority on the Crusades, slammed the movie for ...
