Khalid’s remark is delivered with cinematic solemnity and edited to a cadence that hints at lofty, wise insight. However, this are not sage advice. Not at all. They create a simplistically juvenile distinction between Muslims and Americans, implying that they are two separate species of people, with Americans being exempt from the moral difficulties that seem to plague Muslim life.

Why is any of this relevant? For starters, Rehab is once again making headlines due to Jihad. Another reason is that the United States hasn’t admitted guilt for what it did at Guantánamo despite 20 years, 9 on-site fatalities, 706 transfers, and 35 individuals who are still there. Does Jihad, Rehab, a movie about four guys who were formerly held at Guantánamo and are currently participating in a rehabilitation programme in Saudi Arabia, help us better comprehend their experiences—or our obligations? Or do Jihad and Rehab entirely different things?

The US documentary competition at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival included Jihad, Rehab as an official selection. The movie centres on four Yemeni men who, despite being freed from their decade-and-a-half detention at Guantánamo, are still unable to return to Yemen, a nation that is presently being torn apart by its own conflict. Instead, the men are sent by the United States to Saudi Arabia, where they must spend a year at the Prince Mohammed Bin Naif Counseling and Care Center, which is technically a prison because the inmates are unable to leave but are often referred to as a rehabilitation centre.

Present problem

In the course of the movie, Smaker follows the men’s journeys from the centre, where they must enrol in classes like art therapy, religion, and “interpersonal skills,” to the harsh realities of leaving and living as unemployed Yemenis in Saudi Arabia. Smaker was given exclusive access to the men and the center’s operations.

The movie received positive reviews when it came out, but controversy regarding the movie and its morals had actually been festering since the title, which was extremely insulting. The basic meaning of jihad, which is frequently translated into English as “battle,” for Muslims is the internal conflict one has to constantly engage in in order to improve as a Muslim and as a human. The title, on the other hand, cutely combines jihad with rehab, as if a central tenet of your faith is something you need therapy for. This undermines Muslim conviction and furthers Western misrepresentations of Islam.

But the outrage over the movie didn’t stop with the title. A number of filmmakers met with Sundance curators after the movie was chosen for the festival to express their worries about the movie’s content. Additionally, they published an open letter in which they criticised the movie and Sundance’s selection procedures. Although none of the film’s subjects has ever been accused of anything, let alone found guilty, the main criticism of the movie centres on the implied guilt that surrounds them.

The morality of interrogating men while they are in prison is another issue. How freely do they respond to inquiries from anyone? Abigail Disney, the film’s executive producer, ultimately distanced herself from the project in her own open letter. She wrote: “In a carceral system, especially one in a famously violent dictatorship, a person cannot voluntarily consent to anything.”

In addition, the movie depicts one of the men, who was released from the facility alone, angry, and depressed, preparing to purchase illegal drugs in Saudi Arabia after requesting that the camera stop. The movie imperils his safety by making it appear as though he’s acting criminally.

The issue of involvement in knowledge is another. Five former Guantánamo inmates expressed their disapproval of the video through Cage, a British NGO that works closely with Guantánamo survivors. They claimed to have learnt that two of the four men included in the documentary “were not aware the film was being made publicly.” (Smaker acknowledged in an interview with Variety that the men in the documentary had not watched the movie.) The letter also makes clear that, in accordance with the program’s standards, the men had to admit guilt even in cases when the claims against them were unfounded in order to leave the institution. According to the letter, confessing guilt was a requirement for their release, thus “These men had no choice.”

All of these issues, which were brought up months earlier, led to an initial surge of interest in the documentary, which then swiftly disappeared from news reports and festival circuits. Until a few weeks ago, that is, when Michael Powell, a columnist for The New York Times, wrote about the movie and its detractors, claiming that “Arab and Muslim filmmakers and their white fans accused Ms. Smaker of Islamophobia and American propaganda. Some people claimed that because she was a white woman telling the tale of Arab males, her race rendered her ineligible. With a fresh title (The UnRedacted), a screening at a New Zealand film festival, and a recently finished run at the Laemmle in Los Angeles, he commented that the movie was finally receiving a second chance.

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Smaker has come under more and more spotlight since the Times essay as the most recent victim of a woke “mob.” She was defended by Sebastian Junger in National Review, and Megyn Kelly invited Matt Taibbi to appear on her show to support Smaker. A recent piece about the movie was featured on MSNBC’s Morning, Joe. Sam Harris also spoke with Smaker about her “really awful cancellation” for more than three hours. (The Guardian, on the other hand, dug deep into the matter and claimed that Smaker had a history of mistreating her victims in other projects.) Smaker later started her own GoFundMe page, claiming that she had been “basically blacklisted,” and she now wants to self-distribute the movie. She has already raised more than $690,000.

Despite all of this activity, many issues are still unresolved: Was Meg Smaker a victim of a gang of Arab and Muslim filmmakers who were overly zealous (and profoundly envious)? Had her status as a white, non-Muslim woman caused any injustice? Has a politically correct mob intimidated Sundance into submission?

Of course, it is ludicrous to think that a white woman cannot direct a movie about a non-white male. I frequently instruct students on Laura Poitras’s film My Country, My Country, which is the most in-depth and compassionate portrayal of post-invasion Iraqi politics from the viewpoint of a Sunni Muslim male that you’re likely to find. It is also true that there ought to be a wider variety of stories and points of view in film festivals. These two truths are not in conflict with one another.

The UnRedacted, however, is a bad movie (whatever that term implies). The main issue is “Meg.” She asks the men pointless and deceptive questions. At one point, she inquires, “Do you believe that you are a terrorist?” She asks one, “Do you think you’re a good person or a nasty person?” She also forces the men into awkward positions. Do you think your life was easier when you were in Afghanistan with Al Qaeda? she digs at one of them when he is feeling particularly depressed. She prods a different issue, asking, “Do you want to go to Yemen to serve your people as you did in Bosnia? Let’s be honest here, he carefully replies. I’m not permitted to leave the house. Thus, I am unable to respond to your query. I want to avoid getting into trouble. It is either mind-bogglingly stupid—or a deadly setup—to casually inquire about a war being launched on Yemen by the Saudi government from a Yemeni man being held in Saudi custody.

Although I don’t know the director Meg Smaker, I can evaluate the voice of “Meg” in this documentary. And “Meg” works as a cop. An interrogator is “Meg.” The intelligence officer at Guantánamo named “Meg” is seated across from these prisoners at a table and keeps posing the same queries every day, every month, and every year. One of the men in the movie eventually decides that he’s had enough of “Meg” and declines to continue. His frequent silences in response to “Meg’s” absurd and damning inquiries are emphasised throughout the movie as if to imply that his guilt is implied by his silence. In this movie, refusing to accept guilt serves as visual evidence of guilt.

It would be a tragedy to draw attention away from the actual harm and ethical failings of this movie by claiming that Meg Smaker is an identity politics victim. When will the US acknowledge the harm it caused at Guantánamo and seek redress for those it injured? Former prisoners certainly deserve to have their incredibly harsh lives revealed. Many of these men have been sent to foreign nations where they are unfamiliar with the culture and language. The security services of the government frequently harass many people. They frequently experience severe PTSD as a result of years of abuse, in addition to other health issues. Even this documentary concedes that Guantánamo continues to stalk them after they have left the facility.

However, the movie seems more interested in forcing these men to confess to crimes they didn’t do, as if it can complete the task the US government failed to do, rather than fully examining this human predicament or even hinting at American responsibility in their trauma. In that sense, The UnRedacted ultimately has less to do with the lives of these four men and more to do with the influence of “Meg,” which, looking back, I should have anticipated from the movie’s very first line.

Analysis by: Advocacy Unified Network