Muslim woman wants dentist to close his eyes while treating her? Scripted video viral with communal barbs

A 1.45-minute-long video of a woman wearing a niqab (a veil that covers the entire face except the eyes) is being widely shared on social media. The video contains closed captions in English, according to which the interviewer is asking questions related to wearing a hijab. The clip ends with the interviewer asking the woman what she would do if she had to go to a male dentist. The woman responds that she would take off her hijab but the dentist would need to close his eyes. Several Right-Wing influencers have shared the clip highlighting this specific section of the ‘interview’.

X (formerly Twitter) Blue user Megh Updates 🚨™ (@MeghUpdates) shared the clip mentioned above on December 17 with the following caption: “I will remove hijab while getting treated by a male dentist only if he closes his eyes during treatment 🫣”. The tweet has received over 3.4 Lakh views and has been retweeted over 2,900 times. (Archive)

Readers should note that @MeghUpdates has been found sharing and amplifying misinformation several times in the past.

I will remove hijab while getting treated by a male dentist only if he closes his eyes during treatment 🫣 pic.twitter.com/qN1AjJsK6C

— Megh Updates 🚨™ (@MeghUpdates) December 17, 2023

Several other users such as @rupamurthy1, @rose_k01, @RandomTheGuy_, @SaffronQueen_, @soulfulgirlll, and @MithilaWaala shared the viral clip with similar captions.

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Fact Check

We noticed that the viral clip had a logo on the bottom left of the video frame. The logo said: “TV Vikrama”. We found that it’s a YouTube channel that produces videos in Kannada.

On running a relevant keyword search on YouTube we found the longer version of the viral video on TV Vikrama’s channel. The video was posted by the channel on February 18, 2022.

At the beginning of the video, a disclaimer is displayed on the screen in Kannada which can be translated as: “This fictional interview is an attempt to give some message to some children when they are destroying their future by thinking that religion is the biggest thing while they are getting education….” The same disclaimer can also be found in the description section of the video. This shows that the video does not depict a real interview.

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The description box also mentioned two names, seemingly of the persons who can be seen on the YouTube video, Mumthas and Kirik Keerthi. As per his Instagram bio, Kirik (the interviewer in the fictional YouTube video) is a “Journalist, Bigboss 4 Runner, Actor, Director, Host, Influencer”. On the other hand, Mumthas is an employee at TV Vikrama. She can be seen appearing in several other videos posted by the channel where she is not wearing a hijab or niqab.

Therefore, the viral clip of an interview shared by Right Wing users is actually a part of a scripted interview made by a YouTube channel and not a real conversation with a Muslim woman.