Leftists make a film to exonerate and flatter Muslim jihadis, but it only inspires Muslim critics to hatred and fury.
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“Jihad Rehab” endeavors to show that jihad terrorists imprisoned at Guantánamo are the good guys, and the U.S. government is the real terrorist entity. But even though it reflects reliably Leftist views, “Jihad Rehab” is still not acceptable to the victimhood propaganda industry.
The only narrative allowed in mainstream American culture today is that jihad violence has nothing whatsoever to do with Islam, and that any opposition to it is “racist” and “Islamophobic” and must be condemned, and that Muslims are innocent victims of American oppression, always and in every case, without exception or any kind of shading.
Abigail Disney is the executive producer of “Jihad Rehab,” a 110-minute-long film directed by Meg Smaker about a Saudi facility where captured jihadists undergo a rehabilitation in order to wean themselves off extremist ideology.
Initially, Disney was thrilled with Smaker’s work, calling it “freaking brilliant” in an email to the filmmaker, according to the New York Times.
The film also premiered to widespread acclaim at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival.
But Disney disavowed the project after Arab and Muslim critics took issue with Smaker’s race, arguing that a white woman from California could not tackle the subject of Islamic extremism in a sensitive, unbiased way.
Smaker was accused of peddling Islamophobia and American propaganda. The criticism prompted Sundance Film Festival, one of the most prestigious forums in cinema, to issue a public apology for screening the movie.
Then Abigail Disney wrote [groveled]: “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. I may not be in total agreement with every criticism of the film but that does not obviate my responsibility to earnestly own the damage I had a hand in.”
Disney’s letter and the decision by Sundance to apologize prompted other film festivals to cancel the screening of the documentary. Smaker was disinvited to the Austin-based South by Southwest festival as well as the San Francisco Film Festival.