How Hollywood once portrayed Muslims (or Moslems as we called them then)

Tim W. writes:

I’m a big fan of pre-1965 movies, and I recently purchased the new DVD release of Samuel Bronson’s 1961 epic El Cid, starring Charlton Heston & Sophia Loren. It’s one of those enjoyable, larger-than-life epics from that era. The opening scene of the film shows Muslim warlord Ben Youssef (Herbert Lom) rallying his followers in North Africa to invade Spain. He chastises them for their passivity, calling them poor excuses for sons of the prophet. He tells them to burn their books and take up arms, to put their doctors to work inventing new poisons, and their scientists to work making new weapons. He calls upon the musicians and poets to replace their instruments with swords. He vows to conquer first Spain, then all of Europe, then the entire world, for Islam.

It’s an amazingly accurate depiction of Islamic aims, which could never be shown in a movie made today. Unfortunately, on the commentary track, Samuel Bronson’s son William practically apologizes for the scene, calling it a caricature and saying that it was an exception to his late father’s usual non-racist attitudes. He redeems his father, though, by noting that some “good guy” Muslims appear later in the film. It’s really amazing how people go out of their way to deny reality today.

Here’s Ben Youssef’s speech from the movie:

“The prophet has commanded us to rule the world. Where in all your land of Spain is the glory of Allah? When men speak of you they speak of poets, music makers, doctors, scientists. Where are your warriors? You dare call yourselves sons of the prophet? You have become women! Burn your books, make warriors of your poets, let your doctors invent new poisons for our arrows, let your scientists invent new war machines. And then, kill. Burn. Infidels live on your frontiers. Encourage them to kill each other. And when they are weak and torn, I will sweep up from Africa. And thus the empire of the one God, the true God Allah, will spread first across Spain, then across Europe, then the whole world!”

LA writes:

Great speech, makes me want to join the Muslims and invade Spain!

Like when I once heard Luther’s great hymn, “A Mighty Fortress is Our God,” in a Lutheran Church a few years ago. It stirred me so much I wanted to get up and start marching in the religious wars.

Tim W. replies

LOL!

LA writes:

By the way, just so no one misunderstands, the invasion of Spain from Africa led by Yousseff is not the original Moslem invasion of Spain in the early 8th century, but the Moslem re-invasion in the late 11th century, which took place after the Christians had gradually won back about half of the peninsula from the Moslems.

Alan Levine writes:

It’s not exactly correct to call it the Muslim “re-invasion” of Spain. Ben Youssef and the Almoravides were Berber revivalists from Morocco, fanatics only recently converted to Islam, who had little to do, ethnically and perhaps even religiously, with the well-established Spanish Muslims, whose religious views belonged to the orthodox or mainstream and who by that time were overwhelmingly European in ancestry. That the Spanish Muslims found themselves inviting these geeks from the Sahara to bail them out (and finally regretted doing so) may be of interest as an example of the dilemmas of “moderate” Islam and people who have to live with it…

LA replies:

Geeks from the Saraha, I like that.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 31, 2008 08:23 PM | Send