> It was the first time that Smaker realized that her film might be controversial. “She hadn’t seen the film,” Smaker recalls, “but seemed unhappy that I — as a non-Muslim — was making a film about Muslims.” After she saw it, Chehab went on to write on the TRT World website: “The only perspective needed is the Muslim one. . . . When I, a practicing Muslim woman, say that this film is problematic, my voice should be stronger than a white woman saying that it isn’t.”

I would encourage folks to resist seeing this as “white versus brown” or “Muslim versus non-Muslim.” Identity politics is not sectarian politics—groups of people with common interests aligning against other groups with different interests. It’s about using identity as currency in politics.

Note the phrasing: “the Muslim [view] … my voice.” The same people who say they don’t want white people to speak also usually don’t want other Muslims, with different viewpoints, to speak either. What she wants to do is to speak for Muslims—use them as silent weight to bolster her own point of view.