Imran Khan did not bow to a Jewish politician

Claim: A Facebook video shows Imran Khan bowing down to a man. A slowed-down version of the video is being shared with a caption that claims Khan only bows before Jewish people.

Fact: The video has been slowed down and is misleading. Imran Khan did not bow before a Jewish person as claimed in the caption. The clip is taken from Khan’s 2019 interview with BBC journalist John Simpson and shows Khan bending to take his mic off before leaving in a hurry.

Fact or Fiction?

On 20 April 2022, Facebook user Hamdard Jui posted a video with an Urdu caption, translated into English reads, “Raising the head of youth with pride… this head will only bow before the Jews.” The video includes dramatic music and audio of one of Khan’s speeches where he says that Pakistanis are not slaves and Khan will not let them bow before anyone.

This video was extensively circulated on social media, with many suggesting Khan is removing his microphone while others believed in the claim made in the aforementioned caption.

However, Soch Fact Check found the video to be misleading. The original video is from a 2019 interview with an English foreign correspondent and world affairs editor of BBC News, John Simpson about the Kashmir issue and Pakistan’s relationship with India.

The video in question is deliberately slowed down to make Khan looks like he is bowing to Simpson. In BBC footage, it is apparent through the visuals and the voiceover that Khan was in a rush to leave and bent down momentarily in order to remove his mic before taking his leave.

Moreover, Simpson is a Christian journalist, not a Jewish politician. Thus, the claim in the caption of the slowed-down video is not true.

The original clip can be seen at the 3:30 mark of this video.

Virality

To investigate the virality of the video in question, Soch Fact Check conducted a CrowdTangle analysis. The result of the Urdu keyword “یوتھیوں کا سر فخر سے بلند کرتے ہوئے” turned up 29,600 interactions across 880 Facebook posts.

The misleading video is shared here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here on Facebook between 20 – 30 April 2022.

Conclusion: Imran Khan did not bow to anyone. The video is from a 2019 BBC interview and has been deliberately slowed down and shared to mislead viewers.