This book came about, indirectly, thanks to The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), which I first saw in the mid-1970s and appreciated largely for the monsters created by Ray Harryhausen. I did not consider the film’s depiction of an Islamic world and Muslim characters, concepts which would have meant little to me at the time. Years later, I read an online review which referred to the film’s Sinbad, played by American actor Kerwin Mathews, as the whitest Muslim in Bagdad. Whatever the intentions behind this remark, it raised some provocative questions. Was The 7th Voyage of Sinbad simply an example of the whitewashing all too common in Western cinema? Could the depiction of a Muslim protagonist in this context be a significant achievement in itself, transcending such factors as cultural appropriation, racial masquerade and Orientalism?
The result of my conjecture is this volume, which discusses the depiction of Muslims as heroic figures in Euro-American cinema from the silent era to the present day. There seems little doubt that Islam is frequently represented in Western media as fundamentally alien, unknowable, and above all dangerous to the West. There is however a counter tradition, where Muslim protagonists are rendered in more nuanced and positive terms, eschewing the stereotypes of aggressor, victim or anonymous bystander. In the cinema, figures derived from folklore, such as Sinbad and the Thief of Bagdad, and history, notably Saladin, have a long history of screen representation.
Alongside their heroic attributes, these figures may be flawed and their activities not entirely within the law. The various screen versions of The Thief of Bagdad play upon this notion. In the 1924 film, Douglas Fairbanks’ pickpocket revels in his criminality until transformed by the forces of love and religion, the latter unnamed yet coded as Islam. The 1940 Thief of Bagdad invests Sabu’s younger thief with a moral sensibility, sharing the food he steals. The 1961 film, starring sword-and-sandal icon Steve Reeves, presents its hero as a man of the people, who purloins gold coins from officials for redistribution to the oppressed masses.
The Sinbad of folklore is a problematic figure, an amoral entrepreneur who, during one voyage, resorts to serial murder and corpse pilfering. Understandably, cinematic Sinbads have usually avoided such contentious traits. An early treatment for The 7th Voyage of Sinbad marked its hero as a thief, an aspect quickly abandoned. Sinbad and the War of the Furies (2016), set in the present day, includes a flashback to the original Sinbad killing three women, who return as the vengeful Furies. His American descendent forms a pact with the Furies to defeat a common enemy and absolve the family name. In The Wind and the Lion (1975), Sean Connery’s Moroccan Berber outlaw articulates his Muslim identity as he opposes domestic corruption and foreign incursion, the latter emblematized by President Theodore Roosevelt, who prioritizes political leverage over religious sensibilities.
Muslim Heroes on Screen is published by Palgrave Macmillan