A prank video from an Iraq TV show where an actor disguised as an Islamic priest gets slapped by a female actress for making abusive comments against her is being shared with a false and communal claim adding that it is a real incident from Lebanon.
BOOM found that the video is from a 2020 show on Asia TV, a satellite channel broadcasted from Iraq, where the host and a male actor prank guests on the talk show. In the viral video, Iraqi actress Amani Alaa can be seen being interviewed by the host, while another actor dressed like a Maulvi makes provocative comments against her and women and riles her up, following which she slaps him.
We further found in the full length video, the actress stops immediately after learning that she has been pranked and continues to participate in the show.
The video is in Arabic and is viral with a communal claim in English, "Actress in Lebanon beats up a maulvi during a live TV program after being called as a whore for not wearing #hijab Lebanon which was once majority Christian state is now ruled by Islamist fundamentalists after the sudden demographic change. Feminist around the globe who advocate ‘right to dress’ should watch this.
FACT CHECK
A reverse image search on a keyframe from the video showed that the same video has been viral since 2022 with similar false claims that the incident happened on a Lebanese TV show.
We further ran a search with Arabic keywords on more frames from the video and were able to identify the show host as Hussein Tony. The host had posted the same video on April 2020 on his Facebook page with a caption in Arabic that translates to, "Daily on the Asia Channel, a program called “Kaf wa Muklab” Directed by Saad Al-Zaidi and supervised by Mustafa Al-Dhahabi. 7 pm. Click on the link to watch the episode..."
We noticed the the channel logo visible on the top right corner and a search using Google Lens showed that it was the logo of Asia Network Television, also known as Asia TV, based in Baghdad, Iraq.
Using this we looked for the video with specific keywords on YouTube and found a full episode uploaded in 2020 with the title in Arabic translating to, "The fight of Amani Alaa and the Sheikh (prank and prank program), the strongest Iraqi prank 2020 in Ramadan."
In the full episode, the two men including the host seen in the video do a dance routine in the title track and at the 2.51 and 2.53 counters hold name cards introducing themselves. Using the translation feature on Google Lens we confirmed the identity of the host as Hussein Tony and the actor playing the (Islamic priest) maulvi as Jassim Al Fahad. At the 3.24 counter, the title card on screen identified the woman as actress Amani Ala.
In the full video, after Ala slaps Fahad who is dressed as a maulvi, she is told that it is a prank and Fahad also removes his disguise. She then stops hitting him, calms down and continues to participate in the show.
We also found that several other episodes of the 'Kaf wa Muklab' show hosted by Tony and Fahad, have the same format; with Fahad dressed like a Maulvi making instigatory comments and his identity and the prank revealed after the proverbial 'slap' by the guest.
