'Passion' hits international screens

• Poll: More Americans believe Jews killed Jesus

By Brian Murphy
Associated Press

An Islamic leader says it reveals Jewish "crimes." European Jewish leaders are troubled by it. Israeli theaters don't plan to show it.

"The Passion of the Christ," Mel Gibson's crucifixion epic, is moving into cinemas around the world and into the international tempests whipped up by terrorism, war and clashing religions.

"It's not going to help quiet things down," said Giorgos Moustakis, who teaches theology and Christian ethics at the American College of Greece. "There are fundamentalists in every religion — Christians, Muslims and Jews. Films like this get extremist feelings going. That cannot be good."

"The Passion" has gone global as Christians prepare to observe Easter week. But the coming week is also the Jewish holiday of Passover, which could sharpen the focus on what some perceive as the movie's anti-Semitism.

For many, the core issues of the film are the blood-soaked depiction of Christ's last hours and the emphasis on Jews clamoring for the Romans to crucify him.

Gibson and many clergy deny it has any anti-Semitic overtones.

Many in the Arab world welcome the film, seeing it as an anti-Jewish message gaining worldwide currency.

"The Jews are most upset with the movie because it reveals their crimes against the prophets, the reformers and whoever contradicts their opinions," said Hamza Mansoor, secretary-general of the Islamic Action Front, a hard-line political party in Jordan.

The film has opened to packed houses in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat viewed it at his West Bank compound with a group of local Muslim clerics and Christians from the United States, Canada and Britain. "The Palestinians are still daily being exposed to the kind of pain Jesus was exposed to during his crucifixion," Arafat aide Aub Rdeneh said after the viewing.

Muslims revere Jesus as a prophet, not as the messiah, and some Arab countries banned the film because a strict interpretation of Islam frowns on portraying its prophets as flesh-and-blood characters. But pirated DVD versions are circulating.

Moreover, the Quran insists that regardless of what the New Testament says, Jesus did not die on the cross and thus did not save humanity.

In Israel, the film won't be seen either. Shapira Films, which has the Israeli distribution rights, "decided this was not the appropriate time to screen it," said spokeswoman Orly Ben Eliyahu.

But that doesn't mean it's being ignored in the Jewish state.

"Given the damage he's done to Christian-Jewish relations, I wouldn't want to be Mel Gibson on Judgment Day," wrote Yossi Klein Halevi in the Jerusalem Post.

In France, the film's opening Wednesday coincided with a European Union report showing that among member nations experiencing anti-Semitic acts and threats, France had the sharpest increase — a sixfold jump from 2002 to 2003.

France's Liberation newspaper warned that the film could "exacerbate anti-Semitism." French Roman Catholic bishops worried it "could be used to comfort anti-Semitic opinions."

The film, showing in more than 500 theaters across France, can't be shown to children under 12. In Britain the age limit is 18.

In Germany, Charlotte Knobloch, vice president of the Central Council of Jews, warned that the movie's "suggestive power ... will give a further push to the current resurgence of anti-Semitism."

But the movie has equally firm defenders.

Miikka Ruokanen, a professor of theology at the University of Helsinki in Finland, called it "the best biblical film" and dismissed allegations of anti-Semitism.

Italian theaters will not screen the film until Wednesday. But Pope John Paul II saw it at a private screening in December, and later blessed Jesus' portrayer, actor Jim Caviezel, who is Catholic.

The Roman Catholic archbishop of Paris, Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, described the film as "ridiculous" for its graphic attention to the beatings and abuses suffered by Jesus.

Others, too, recoiled at the violence.

Oslo Bishop Gunnar Staalsett said on Norwegian state television that it was so "downright gruesome," he felt nauseated.

In the Philippines, Manila Archbishop Gaudencio Rosales called it "a serious labor of love, painstakingly made, of genuine artistic and religious value." He cautioned viewers against reading an anti-Jewish message into the film.

Poll: More Americans believe Jews killed Jesus

The percentage of Americans who believe Jews were responsible for killing Jesus has grown in recent years, although it remains a view held by a minority, according to a poll released yesterday.

The survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found 26 percent of respondents believe Jews were to blame for the Crucifixion, up from 19 percent in ABC News poll in 1997.

The greatest increase was among young people and blacks.

Thirty-four percent of those under age 30 now believe Jews were responsible, compared with 10 percent in 1997, the Pew Center said. And 42 percent of blacks hold that view, compared with 21 percent seven years ago.

The poll was conducted amid controversy over Mel Gibson's epic "The Passion of the Christ." Some say the film unfairly portrays the role of Jews in Jesus' death.

The film, financed by Gibson, has been a big hit, earning more than $300 million.

The Pew survey did not ask whether respondents believe Jews today should be blamed for the Crucifixion. But they noted that an ABC poll this year found an overwhelming majority rejected that view.

The Pew survey of 1,703 adults was conducted March 17 to 21 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.