Sigh. The servility of modern western mind. Or is it cowardice? Well, both terms are not too far apart anyway. That school should see some change in teaching personnel.
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Originally Posted by Admiral Halsey
To be fair Saladin apparently did actually treat PoW's at least with respect. IIRC the crusaders actually respected the guy which is really saying something.
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No, that is a myth if you generalise it that way. Before Richard landed in the unholy land, and Saladin still was commander in service of some king on today'S Syrian territory, he defeated a French army and had the noble elite of it, princes and noblemen, executed along with all other prisoners without any logicstical or military need, to send the Europeans a message of the kind IS tries today. During and after the struggle for Jerusalem, he sometimes let prisoners live and traded them for gold from Europe, like it was common habit amongst the feudal leaders in East and West alike in those times, but then he also sometimes executed prisoners, especially if they belonged to the military Christian elite. The Templars for example were such an elite, and also he knew that because they effectively were warrior monks, their motivation was such that not only they would not be converted, but also would continue to fight once they got released from prison. So these also were executed. Saladdin reigned with iron fist and commanded the execution of many reformists and critical Muslim minds, some of the most promising alternative thinkers in the Islamic world of that time were brought to death by his will. The shrine they build for him holds a scripture that only rarely gets translated when they make another TV film about it: "He cleaned the earth of the dirt of the infidels". Ridley Scott painted a hopelessly distorted picture of him, though the usual fascinating one that the world now is used to believe in .
Saladdin is one of the most
transfigured figures in history that I know of. But the substance does not justify the holy shine, even if many famous names fell for it, like Voltaire and Goethe. Voltaire at least in the end corrected his mistake. Goethe died ignorant on Islam.
However, the whole modern reinterpretation of the crusade wars is a hopeless case. Tells more about modern western mind and Islamic self-understanding, than history.
Regarding the respect you mentioned, the rule of that time was simply this: "king does not kill king".