A interesting article Here has Raison by Robby Soave; I don’t know anything else about the controversy, so I can’t vouch for it, but I generally liked Soave’s work and thought it was worth highlighting. I would be happy to point out thoughtful contrary opinions, if our readers recommend them. Here are the opening paragraphs (which also refer to a New York Times article on the subject), slightly reorganized:
Jihad Rehab is a documentary by Meg Smaker, a former firefighter who moved from California to Yemen and then to Saudi Arabia following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001…. The film centers on four men accused of terrorism, imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay, then sent to a rehabilitation center in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The goal of the center is ostensibly to deradicalize and reintegrate its unwilling participants. The New York Times describes it as spanning “an unlikely distance between prison and boutique hotel”. …
{Following its inclusion at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2022, the film and filmmaker became pariahs in elite filmmaking circles, primarily because Smaker, a white woman, dared to make a film about the experience of Islamic men….
“Film critics have warned that curators might hold back on these human portraits,” Remarks The New York Times in a recent and much-discussed article on Jihad Rehabcancellation. “But the attacks would come from the left, not the right.”} …