In this article I argue that in Kingdom of Heaven Ridley Scott creates historical analogies between Saladin's taking of Jerusalem and the Third Crusade, on the one hand, and the Israeli-Palestinian question and American-led ‘War on Terror’, on the other hand. I maintain that Scott pictures the one-state solution in which both the Israelis and the Palestinians can coexist peacefully as a feasible settlement. By presenting the idea of a shared Jerusalem under the Crusaders' rule in the past, Scott wittingly promotes through a contrived historical analogy to contemporary Western interventionism in the Middle East. Crucially, Scott goes beyond Samuel Huntington's essentialist views of Muslims. He provides variable representations of Muslim characters, fluctuating between characters that are superstitious, on the one hand, and characters that are capable of rational thinking, on the other hand. Nevertheless, Scott seems to be highly convinced about the myth of religious violence, as suggested by William Cavanaugh. This myth suggests that secular violence is rational and useful whereas religious violence is irrational and dangerous. Moreover, Scott proves to be swayed by the idea of the ‘just war’ according to which the use of force can be legitimate. In Kingdom of Heaven, Scott pictures the ongoing ‘War on Terror’ as an incarnation of earlier centuries' European (colonial) ‘civilising missions’ towards the ‘less-civilised’ nations.
in Jerusalem Quarterly, the only Arab journal that focuses exclusively on the city of Jerusalem's history, political status, and future. In his article, Said raises various issues regarding Jerusalem and the Palestinian-Israeli peace process. The article depicts Israel's policy of Judaizing Jerusalem and its attempts to make Jerusalem its eternal capital. Said tries to expose the Israeli meretricious strategies regarding Jerusalem which begin by projecting an image of what itwants the world to believe and then translating that false image into reality. Said also underscores the fact that both Palestinians and the pan-Arab nation have failed to counteract the Israeli policy of selling to the world the notion of Jerusalem belonging exclusively to Israel, a failure that has enabled Israel to tighten its grip on the Holy City and to curb the Palestinians', the Arabs' and the Muslims' attempts to counterattack on the level of media information. In Said's view, the only hope for the future is a decent and fair coexistence between the two peoples based upon equality and self-determination. For him, the separation between the Palestinians and the Israelis since 1948 has not led to successful outcomes; a one state-rather than a binational-state solution is, therefore, the more possible way of resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict.
This paper examines representations of the Islamic East in two novels by Sir Walter Scott: Ivanhoe (1820) and The Talisman (1825). The paper’s argument is that Scott’s representations of the Islamic East seems influenced in very specific ways by dominant nineteenth-century portrayals of the East. Scott’s two novels present ambivalent depictions of the East, some of which deviate from standard patterns of representation of earlier centuries. For instance, on the one hand his novels attribute positive spiritual qualities to Saracens such as generosity, bravery and kindness to animals, while on the other, and often in the same passage, they sometimes depict Saracens as violent and atavistic. I argue that, through his various narrators and characters, Scott depicts the relationship between the Islamic East and the Christian West as a significant form of cultural interaction whereby the East is presented as complementing the West. However, Scott’s portrayal of East-West relation is complex, and it would be inaccurate to claim that this denotes total acceptance of Islamic manners, customs and perspectives.
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