If you don’t know who Meg Smaker is, it’s not your fault. It’s not on a critical to-do list, but she’s a filmmaker who ventured into Saudi Arabia’s radical Islam rehabilitation facilities to dissect what draws young Muslim men toward the frenzied, violent, and destructive path of terrorism. The documentary's name is “Jihad Rehab,” and Smaker wanted to highlight the Muslim view regarding the war on terror, which our Pentagon aptly calls the ‘long war.’
The film was showered with praise at first and was showcased at the Sundance Film Festival this year. Abigail Disney was an executive producer on the project, calling it “freaking brilliant.” Smaker feared conservatives would attack the project, but as it turns out, she has more to fear from progressives. When the film was presented, it was liberals, not conservatives, who torched the documentary.
The reason was simple. The Left was aghast that Smaker, a white woman, would have the audacity to make such a film—it broke the cultural appropriation rules. Muslim culture can only be enjoyed or articulated by fellow Muslims, part of the cultural apartheid that the Left has adopted recently. The same protocols apply to cuisine. For a movement that stresses diversity and unity, they have embraced policies and trends that do nothing but divide. In cinema, it’s no different, which now has Smaker on the financial ropes as the woke mob has mobilized against her. She has maxed out credit cards, with Disney disavowing the film after the ‘woke’ uproar. With festivals now withdrawing viewings and rescinding invitations, you can see the impact these illiberal reactions by the Left to attack anything they view as problematic have on ordinary people, folks who, like Smaker, want to tell a story that is often underreported (via NYT):
Meg Smaker felt exhilarated last November. After 16 months filming inside a Saudi rehabilitation center for accused terrorists, she learned that her documentary “Jihad Rehab” was invited to the 2022 Sundance Festival, one of the most prestigious showcases in the world.
Her documentary centered on four former Guantánamo detainees sent to a rehab center in Saudi Arabia who had opened their lives to her, speaking of youthful attraction to Al Qaeda and the Taliban, of torture endured, and of regrets.
Film critics warned that conservatives might bridle at these human portraits, but reviews after the festival’s screening were strong.
“The absence of absolutes is what’s most enriching,” The Guardian stated, adding, “This is a movie for intelligent people looking to have their preconceived notions challenged.” Variety wrote: The film “feels like a miracle and an interrogative act of defiance.”
But attacks would come from the left, not the right. Arab and Muslim filmmakers and their white supporters accused Ms. Smaker of Islamophobia and American propaganda. Some suggested her race was disqualifying, a white woman who presumed to tell the story of Arab men.
Sundance leaders reversed themselves and apologized.
[…]
Ms. Smaker’s film has become near untouchable, unable to reach audiences. Prominent festivals rescinded invitations, and critics in the documentary world took to social media and pressured investors, advisers and even her friends to withdraw names from the credits. She is close to broke.
[…]
Many Arab and Muslim filmmakers — who like others in the industry struggle for money and recognition — denounced “Jihad Rehab” as offering an all too familiar take. They say Ms. Smaker is the latest white documentarian to tell the story of Muslims through a lens of the war on terror. These documentary makers, they say, take their white, Western gaze and claim to film victims with empathy.
Assia Boundaoui, a filmmaker, critiqued it for Documentary magazine.
“To see my language and the homelands of folks in my community used as backdrops for white savior tendencies is nauseating,” she wrote. “The talk is all empathy, but the energy is Indiana Jones.”
The allegations of the white savior complex being threaded into this picture are nonsensical. You don’t need to view the feature to know it’s left-wing, pseudointellectual gobbledygook. Let the viewer and the market decide, which is the whole point, but liberals cannot allow that because often, the wider public would probably find this movie profound. Average citizens do not view everything through a prism of rigid ideological tenets. The irony here is that Smaker is being canceled for being a white documentarian who did a picture about alleged Saudi Arabian terrorists who are being re-educated. The folks with the most issue with that are the whitest.
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