I watched the movie Sultan and the Saint over the weekend at the Bayan Claremont Graduate School of Theology in Claremont. While the movie was quite well made and it has a strong message of interfaith dialogue and courage, the point that stuck to me was not the central message; but rather a peripheral one : Small acts of kindnesses can have huge impacts.
In the movie, the Sultan, Sultan Al Kamil is shown to be kind to his aggressors, the crusaders who have attacked Egypt. At a time when the aggressors are locked from all sides by water from the Nile, the Sultan sends food and other provisions so the crusaders dont die. This single act, argue some of the scholars interviewed in the movie changed the course of the war. In addition to getting the crusaders to giving up their war, which was getting too costly and fruitless, one can argue that this act could have had a transformative effect on them as well.
Kindness from a friend is to be expected, but from a sworn enemy can be transformative. This is the one lesson I took away from this movie.
