INSIDE THE SHAMEFUL CANCELLATION OF JIHAD REHAB:
The title was a big point of criticism. “Jihad Rehab” was what the center was called when [director Meg] Smaker first heard about it in Yemen, but coming from her, it might sound flip. “Jihad” means struggle in Arabic — including a spiritual struggle — and critics have said that the association with violence is racist and disrespectful. (Smaker’s own subjects freely use the word to mean waging war to defend fellow Muslims.) And to many critics, the word “rehab” reeked of a presumption of guilt for men who had never been charged with crimes, possibly because they were tortured at CIA dark sites and at Guantanamo. (After Sundance, Smaker added several text cards to ensure that viewers understood what one of the detainees said about his unlawful detention. She also changed the film title to “The UnRedacted.”)
In fact, Smaker’s film is nothing less than a nearly two-hour indictment of America’s deeply shameful experiment with unlawful imprisonment. She makes abundantly clear that the subjects were held without trial and subjected to torture sessions that included waterboarding, beatings, and, allegedly, sexual assault by a female guard while a detainee was pinned to the ground by male guards. “Americans torture — they never tire of it,” one of the men tells Smaker. She apparently earned the trust of these four men because they all speak freely and honestly about things that many people consider to be crimes. (One man went on to say that he did not think 9/11 was a big deal until he saw people jumping to their deaths at the World Trade Center; then he experienced a terrible shame.) The earnestness of their conversation, the way they seem to search for the right words, and their occasional laughter or tears suggest subjects who were completely at ease with Smaker and what she was documenting. A fifth subject who was clearly not comfortable with it dropped out halfway through.
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More serious, however, was Abigail Disney’s reversal. The granddaughter of one of the founders of the Disney empire and a ubiquitous presence in the documentary world, Disney was a fierce advocate for the film — and a financial backer. After a screening session months before the Sundance announcement, Disney wrote Smaker, “This film is SOOOO good and SOOO gorgeously shot and SOOOO well edited that you must take in this one thing before you read on: WOW WOW WOW. You have made something great.”
After the film’s premiere in late January, Sundance posted a public letter apologizing for having “harmed” the filmmaking community, though it never specified what the harm was. Rave reviews started to pour in nevertheless, but in ways that just made things worse. Variety, IndieWire, and other industry stalwarts praised the film’s compassionate and intimate look at the lives of the former detainees, but rather than vindicate Smaker, the reviews seemed to prove that the entire industry was biased. A pressure campaign later forced several of these publications to change their stories to avoid using the word “terrorists.”
And it kept getting worse. A viewer must have taken photos of the end credits during the premiere, because one by one, people who had worked on the film were tracked down and accused of being Islamophobic. One person, who had done nothing but advise Smaker on how to get her hard drives through U.S. customs, was told that she would be publicly outed as Islamophobic if her name remained in the credits. Calls also went out to the composer, consultants, advisers, and even people in the special-thanks section of the credits. Shortly after, people started to ask that their names be removed. Finally, Disney buckled.
“First and foremost, I am truly sorry,” she posted in a public apology at the end of February. “A film I executive produced, Jihad Rehab, has landed like a truckload of hate on people whom I sincerely love and respect. I failed, failed, and absolutely failed to understand just how exhausted by and disgusted with the perpetual representation of Muslim men and women as terrorists or former terrorists or potential terrorists the Muslim people are.” (Contacted by email, Disney declined to comment.)
Lengthy, but well worth a read.