ISLAMOPHOBIA AND RUDOLF VALENTINO’S AMERICA. – PART I.

BUT ISN’T ISLAMOPHOBIA A TOOL OF ISLAMIC PROPAGATION AND HATERS OF ISLAM ARE PROMOTORS OF ISLAM?

By Mansor Puteh

This is definitely not reverse psychology; it is the truth any way one looks at the whole issue.

The other truth is no matter how Islam is chastised by some individuals in the West, the more it hurts the religion they claim to profess, and the more it benefits Islam as there is no other religion in the world that has seen a sudden surge with the reversion of many to it.

This is despite the fact that some Muslims, who are mostly Afghans, Iraqis and Palestinians who are decimated by Zionist, American and its allied forces who were all sent to these Arab and Muslim countries to do mischief.

But what they did not realize is how they had come so close to Islam, which they had not managed to do before.

It is America which is sending them to Islam and taking it back with them to America, if they are still alive and in one piece.

So Geert Wilders and Terry Jones are good for Islam for they are Muslim propagators too. They didn’t know that; they also didn’t know what they were doing.

“Women are not in love with me but with the picture of me on the screen. I am merely the canvas on which women paint their dreams.” – Rudolf Valentino – 1923. 

Rudolf Valentino, the Italian immigrant who became an early superstar of the ‘silent era’ of Hollywood endeared himself to the American film-goers until his untimely demise at such a young age.

To them he was the ‘romantic hero’ of early Hollywood when silence superseded words and crass emotions.

He was born on 6 may, 1895 in Castellaneta, Italy and died on 23 august, 1926 in New York City. He immigrated to America in 1913 and worked as a dancer before acting in films in Hollywood five years later.

And he became so for no reason, other than to portray heroes in action flicks who are romantically linked to some of the early heroines of that period, and playing the parts of the Arab sheikh.

Yes, American women were falling in love with him and the Arab sheikhs and all Arab and things Arab, all at the same time.

They did not discount the fact that he was playing such a role because they came in a neat package with no negative biases or prejudices attached.  

If he had played the part of a hero belonging to another race, even an Italian which he was one, he would not have got the same impact as he managed to get from the female fans.

The Hollywood studios and the whole of America knew that. It was a time when they were looking outside of America, to a place so peaceful and calm, a giant oasis of tranquility and serenity, a place they could never find anywhere in their vast lands, despite much of their country being arid desert and semi-desert.

They wanted to look at a people, their different religion which is in the same Abrahamic group as theirs, and who exhibited a vision of the past and of a promising future. They could relate to that.

What caused America and Hollywood then to cast such an actor who spoke no word on screen to play the part of an Arab and a sheikh at that?

They could have given him a better part in his debut film called ‘The Sheik’ (sic) in 1921 which shot him to instant stardom.
After a few other films, he reprised his role which made him famous through America, in ‘The Son of Sheik’ in 1926, the year he died at the age of 31 from a ruptured ulcer. It caused hysteria, with several suicides, and riots at his funeral.

What sort of America then are we talking about? And what sort of America can we talk now?

Everything that was good with the Arab, Arab sheikhs and all things Arab is not no so.

The change in attitude amongst the Americans is so drastic. One, however, cannot see it if one did not know how they had treated them in the past to know the difference in their attitude today.

The country had grown out of their fascination from things Arab and Rudolf to Osama, Al-Qaeda and the Taliban which divides America into two distinct eras – The Era of Rudolf Valentino and the Era of Osama bin Laden, with both attracting much attention of the whole nation during their time but for different reasons.  

And why was America so fascinated with Rudolf and Arab sheiks then as they do with Osama, Al-Qaeda and the Taliban?

One can go back to basics, if one wishes to find out why there was a change in emphasis and focus.