The Problem With Jihad, Rehab Isn’t Filmmaker Meg Smaker’s Color or Religion

For The Nation, I weighed in on a documentary that is prompting much commentary. My take? The idea that a white woman cannot make a film about non-white men is absurd. But as “Meg,” the film’s narrator, her voice is the voice of the cop.

The first word you hear when watching the documentary Jihad, Rehab is “Meg.”

The speaker is a man identified only as Khalid. He’s an erstwhile resident of the Prince Mohammed Bin Naif Counseling and Care Center, a combination halfway house and reeducation camp in Saudi Arabia for presumed and convicted extremists. Addressing the filmmaker, Meg Smaker, Khalid begins this film by saying, “Meg. Can I tell you something?”

“Sure,” she responds. “In every story, there is good and bad,” he says, “but it’s a thin line. You know, some people, they look at us as criminals. But some people look at us as heroes. Because you are American, you cannot understand.”

Queue the slow-motion flying pigeons.

Khalid’s comment is uttered with cinematic gravitas and edited to a cadence suggesting heady, thoughtful wisdom. But these are not wise words. Far from it. They establish a childishly simplistic dichotomy and suggest that Muslims and Americans are two different species of people, with Americans free of the moral complications that seem to beset Muslim life.

Why does any of this matter? For one thing, because Jihad, Rehab is back in the news. And, for another, because after 20 years, nine on-site deaths, and 706 transfers, and with 35 men still languishing in Guantánamo, the United States has yet to confront its responsibility for what it has done there. Does Jihad, Rehab, a film about four men previously detained at Guantánamo and now subject to a rehabilitation program in Saudi Arabia, bring us any closer to understanding their experiences—or our responsibilities? Or does Jihad, Rehab do something else entirely?

Read the rest here.