Sultan Malik Al-Kamil (L) meets St. Francis of Assisi (R)

The docudrama, The Sultan and the Saint, about Muslim-Christian peace-making, will air tonight, January 2 at 7:00 p.m. on New Mexico PBS channel 5.1 (KNME-TV). It will re-air on Friday, January 5 at midnight on channel 9.1.

The Sultan and the Saint tells one of the great, lost stories from history — of Francis of Assisi and Sultan Malik Al-Kamil, the Sultan of Egypt, and their meeting on a bloody battlefield during the period of Christian-Muslim conflict known as the Crusades.

When they met during the Fifth Crusade, each were transformed in notable ways. Told with cinematic-style reenactments and interviews with renowned historians, art experts, religious thinkers, and brain scientists, the film centers on these two men of faith, who had an improbable meeting during a terrible period of religious conflict between their faiths, and discovered a way of finding peace between them.

Set in a past period of East-West conflict, it speaks with urgency to our present. These two men of faith, one a Christian preacher, the other the ruler of a Muslim Empire, bucked a century of war, distrust, and insidious propaganda in a search for mutual respect and common ground. For more information about the film, visit www.SultanandtheSaintFilm.com.

Tags: Christian, interfaith dialogue, Muslim