Shampoo over hijab? Right-wing users share old spoof video to mock Muslims

A short clip in which a woman is seen putting shampoo on her hijab is being circulated on social media as a “Malaysian shampoo advertisement”. It is being shared with communal jibes at Muslims.

X user Sunanda Roy (@SaffronSunanda), who peddles communal propaganda and disinformation on a regular basis, shared the video on July 9 with the caption, “Hair Shampoo ad under Sharia Law 🤡”

The tweet received close to 9 Lakh views and over 1,6000 retweets.

Another X user named Nioh Berg (@NiohBerg) shared it with the following text: “Never forget the halal shampoo commercial where only her hijab gets clean”. This tweet received over 7 Lakh views.

Viral in the Past as well

The video started doing the rounds on social media in 2017 with users asking “Is she shampooing her hijab?”

Some others wrote, “Can it get any more stupid?”

“Retards”, said another X (then Twitter) user, sharing the video.

A Right-wing website named 99Wiki wrote an article with the headline, “Shampoo advt reveals deplorable condition of Muslim women!“. The article said, “every Bigot Libtard will relentlessly advocate liberal modern Islam. They all stand exposed now, by something as simple as a shampoo advertisement”, followed by “what kind of a medieval religion is this?”

A website called Indian Voice went on to highlight “draconian Sharia law” and “second class status of women in the Muslim society”.

Fact Check

We performed a reverse image search with a key frame from the video and came across the following YouTube video.

The viral bit comes up 0.33 seconds onward in the video.

We found that a Malaysian scarf company called “Escarves” was behind the video. The company and its advertising agency decided to make a parody of an old Sunsilk shampoo advertisement to promote their scarves. It was meant to be a satirical take on the original Sunsilk advertisement. The video recreated a 2006 Sunsilk advertisement. The parody video was titled ‘Budak 90an Je Tahu Iklan-Iklan Macam Ni’ (Translation: Only ’90s Kids Will Understand This).

The original Sunsilk shampoo advertisement can be seen below.

The full Escarves video can be seen below. Much is lost in translation but as the Malaysian site explains, for Malaysians it was actually meant to be a funny video.

The founder of the Escarves, Eyda Sukiman, stated on Facebook that the video was just a parody video.

A representative of the company told Cilicos, “Our headscarves are as comfy as how your hair would feel after shampooing. That was what we were trying to deliver in the video.”

To sum up, an extract from a spoof video made in Malaysia was shared without context. The original video, a sarcastic take on a popular Shampoo ad from the yesteryears, was given a communal spin by Right-wing websites and social media users.