'Angels & Demons' Film Adaptation Scratches Muslim Villain

In addition to the anti-Catholicism present in the forthcoming release of "Angels & Demons", there's another politically correct element to the movie adaptation of the Dan Brown novel that's worth noting: Hollywood's aversion to portraying radical Muslims as the bad guys.

From Christian film critic Dr. Ted Baehr's May 14 review (h/t Townhall's Greg Hengler; emphasis mine):

[A]lthough (unlike the book) the movie's dialogue has some positive statements about faith in Jesus Christ, the person making many of these statements turns out to be the real villain, a mad clergyman who also is one of the most conservative Christians depicted in the story. Furthermore, when confronted by these various statements about Jesus Christ, the hero keeps his agnosticism. In fact, the movie's ultimate impression is that Christians throughout history are mostly a bunch of well meaning but bumbling fools with a few really bad guys and hypocrites included in the bunch.

Also unlike the book, the assassin henchman of the mad clergyman in the movie is not a rabid Muslim as he is in the novel, but a very lapsed Catholic. He is not killing for Allah, but for money.

This is nothing new, of course.

Take, for example, 2002's "Sum of All Fears," an adaptation of the Tom Clancy novel by the same name, where the novel's chief villains were changed from Palestinians bent on subverting American support for Israel to neo-Nazis hoping to trigger a nuclear war that would destroy the U.S. and Russia out of a desire to avenge the demise of Hitler's Third Reich.