The film was “very good” until Muslim critics started calling it “Islamophobia.” Then everyone stepped back and turned to filmmaker Meg Smack and filmmaker Abigail Disney.
As I defined it in an article at the beginning of this debate, “Jihadi Rehabilitation Center” seeks to show how great the poor jihadist terrorists held at Guantanamo are, and that the US authorities are a real terrorist entity. However, although it reliably reflects leftist views, “jihadist rehabilitation” is still not acceptable to the victim propaganda trade.
Any destructive speech about jihadist violence or sharia oppression, even a speech like “jihadist rehabilitation,” which they might interpret as destructive if they squinted and squinted, is actually tough, both May be denounced as “Islamophobia”. One of the narratives allowed by mainstream American tradition, as we have said, is that jihadist violence has nothing to do with Islam, that anything against it is “racist” and “Islamophobic” and must be condemned, and that Muslims are harmless Victims of American oppression, at all times and in all circumstances, without exception or shadow of any kind.
“Abigail Disney denies her solo film about terrorism under pressure from Muslim critics: report,” Ariel Zilber, New York Post, September 26, 2022:
Abigail Disney has denied her critically acclaimed documentary on terrorism after Muslim critics accused her director of selling dangerous stereotypes about Islam.
Disney, the granddaughter of Walt Disney and his brother and Disney co-founder Roy Disney, is listed as the manager-producer of “Jihadi Rehab,” a film directed by Meg Smack 110 minutes long movie…
After learning to speak fluent Arabic, she began filming a film at a Saudi facility that captured jihadists and endured rehabilitation to escape extremist ideology…
Initially, Disney was very excited about Smaker’s work, calling it “fantastic” in an email to the filmmakers, based on The New York Times. The film also premiered at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival to critical acclaim.
However, after Arab and Muslim critics challenged Smaker’s race, Disney denied the promise, arguing that a white woman from California could not handle the topic of Islamic extremism in a subtle, unbiased way.
Smaker is accused of peddling Islamophobia and American propaganda. The criticism prompted the Sundance Film Pageant, possibly the film industry’s most prestigious board, to challenge a public apology for screening the film….
Lebanese-American filmmaker Jude Chehab wrote a review on TRTWorld in which she declared: “Once I, a trained Muslim lady, said there was something wrong with the film, my The sound should be finer than a white lady saying it. The level is clean.”
Disney wrote in an open letter that the film “landed like a truckload of hate.”
“I failed, failed, and utterly failed to understand how exhausted and disgusted it is for Muslim women and men to be permanently portrayed as terrorists, ex-terrorists, or potential terrorists,” Disney wrote.
“I may not have fully addressed every criticism of the film, but that doesn’t absolve me of taking the hurt I’ve suffered seriously.”…
Disney’s letter and Sundance’s choice of apology prompted different festivals to cancel screenings of documentaries depending on the occasion.
In addition to the San Francisco movie pageant, Smaker was canceled from the South by Southwest contest in Austin…