Destiny

As a liberal humanist whose ideals were often at odds with the encroaching forces of religious fundamentalism, director Youssef Chahine found rich personal resonances in this urgent and engaging historical panorama, made in reaction to the unprecedented wave of Islamic terrorism that rocked Egypt in the nineties. DESTINY centers on the twelfth-century Islamic philosopher, judge, and polymath Ibn Rushd, commonly known in the West as Averroes. In the Arab-ruled Spanish province of Andalusia, the brilliant Averroës (Nour el-Sherif) lives at the center of a secular, multicultural world of learning and open inquiry—until a sect of extremists set out to suppress everything he represents.