diff --git a/scrapy/selector/unified.py b/scrapy/selector/unified.py
index 60598a24d..b8a3678a8 100644
--- a/scrapy/selector/unified.py
+++ b/scrapy/selector/unified.py
@@ -18,7 +18,8 @@ __all__ = ['Selector', 'SelectorList']
 
 class SafeXMLParser(etree.XMLParser):
     def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
-        super(SafeXMLParser, self).__init__(*args, resolve_entities=False, **kwargs)
+        kwargs.setdefault('resolve_entities', False)
+        super(SafeXMLParser, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
 
 _ctgroup = {
     'html': {'_parser': etree.HTMLParser,