Does a video show Muhammad Moin Al-Din, an 86-year-old man, caught in the act of sexually assaulting a 7-year-old girl in the tall grass of an agricultural field as a viral tweet claimed? No, that's not true: This false narrative has been attached to a short clip from a controversial 2004 Iranian TV series. The original series had a strong antisemitic propaganda plot that centered on Israeli doctors harvesting organs from Palestinian children. Now, 20 years later, a clip from the controversial series has been repurposed to spread a false Islamophobic narrative on social media.
The video clip was posted on X (archived here) on June 19, 2024, by Salwan Momika. His X profile has this bio: "Critic and thinker - atheist. I fight for a West free of Islam." The post was captioned:
Muhammad Moin Al-Din, 86 years old. He sexually assaults a 7-year-old girl in an agricultural field. This is an Islamic culture, and also Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, married Aisha when she was 6 years old. What do you think of people who believe in this culture? They live in the West today in their numbers in the millions
(Source: X screenshot taken on Thu Jun 20 13:48:14 2024 UTC)
In the 13-second clip, a man and a young girl are lying down in a field of tall sugar cane. They sit up and he helps her to her feet; she appears slightly dazed as he helps her walk away. The audio attached to this clip, which replaced the original soundtrack, is just the sound of wind blowing. The full 2004 series was posted on YouTube on January 25, 2024, with the title, "Zehra's Eyes - 2004 (Zahra's Blue Eyes) Cult Production | Full Movie - Full HD - Restored" The clip in question occurs at the 2:32:50 mark into the video (pictured below). In the fictional scene, the two have spent the night hiding in the cane field from a patrol of Israeli police with dogs who are looking for them. The film cuts to daybreak. The soundtrack includes the sounds of insects, the girl yawning and the man speaking to her. Subtitles in English read:
Zahra! - Get up, dear. Looks like there's a road here. This is the road, you stay here.
(Source: YouTube screenshot taken on Thu Jun 20 13:48:14 2024 UTC)
The TV series was controversial because of its antisemitic plot. The station, Sahar TV, which belongs to the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), was banned in France on February 10, 2005, because the program was among those considered "likely to cause serious disturbances of the peace." The show was also mentioned in the International Religious Freedom Report 2005 on Iran, which was produced by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor in the United States, where the series is described:
In December 2004, the country's Sahar 1 TV station began airing a weekly series titled 'For You, Palestine,' or 'Zahra's Blue Eyes,' set in Israel and the West Bank. Produced in Farsi and subsequently translated into Arabic, this series depicted Israeli government, military, and civilian personnel harvesting organs from Palestinian children for the benefit of Israeli officials.
The Lead Stories composite image below shows additional claims based on the clip from "Zahra's Blue Eyes" that were posted on X on June 20, 2024, and June 19, 2024. These two false posts both name Jacobabad, Pakistan, as the location of the purported assault by a man named Mohammad Moinuddin.
(Source: Lead Stories composite image with X screenshots taken on Thu Jun 20 16:36:27 2024 UTC)
Additional Lead Stories fact checks on Islamophobic claims can be found here.
