Hollywood, Islam and Political Correctness

[Valin]

Carnage and Culture:

Saturday, July 12, 2014

Oliver Williams

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/

July 10, 2014

In March, the TV network ABC Family cancelled the show Alice in Arabia after a campaign by the Council on American-Islamic Relations [CAIR], a controversial group with links to extremism, and accusations of racism in the liberal media. The show was to be about a Muslim American teen that is taken to Saudi Arabia by her extended family after the death of her parents and never allowed to return. ABC Family were apparently taken aback by the opposition to the show. "The current conversation surrounding our pilot was not what we had envisioned," they said. They had seemingly set out to make an inoffensive program. Its writer, Brooke Elkmeier, said the show was pro-Arab and pro-tolerance and "meant to give Arabs and Muslims a voice on American TV." The protagonist was an Arab Muslim.

What were CAIR and the liberal media so outraged by? The plot is hardly far-fetched. According to a report by Human Rights Watch , women of all ages in Saudi Arabia "are forbidden from traveling, studying, or working without permission from their male guardians." Depicting the bigotry of Saudi society is itself seen as bigoted. Saudi Arabia is a country where women cannot drive; where veiling is mandatory; where adultery, apostasy and "blasphemy" are crimes punishable by death; where, under sharia law, a woman's testimony is worth half that of a man's; and where limbs are amputated for theft. In the politically correct attempt to avoid "stereotyping" and be safe from discomfort, have we been blocking out reality?

The big-budget star-studded film, Kingdom of Heaven, released by Ridley Scott in 2005 and set during the crusades, features a scene in which, after the sacking of Jerusalem, the Muslim Sultan Saladin walks through a smashed-up room, picks up a cross from the floor and respectfully returns it to its proper place on the table top.

Was this historically plausible? Scott had gone to the trouble of hiring Dr. Tom Asbridge, a scholar at Queen Mary University in London, as a historical advisor. As revealed in the latest issue of QMA, the university's alumni magazine, Asbridge told Scott "there is compelling first-person, Arabic testimony from an advisor to Saladin, that tells us in great detail about their entry to Jerusalem. And Saladin ordered the cross to be removed from the roof of the Dome of the Rock and smashed."

Scott reportedly reacted with annoyance. The scene stayed and Asbridge got his name taken off the credits. The PC untruth was more pleasant than reality. The film went on to depict a priest assuring Christians that "killing an infidel is not murder. It is the path to heaven."

(Snip)