This video, showing Shah Rukh Khan speaking about ‘jihad’ in front of the Prime Minister, is edited

A video (here, here and here) going viral on social media claims to show Indian film star Shah Rukh Khan explaining the meaning of ‘jihad‘ beginning with the statement “I am a Muslim believing in Islam,” allegedly in front of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Let’s find out the truth behind this video.

The archived post can be found here.

Claim: The viral video shows Shah Rukh Khan explaining the meaning of “jihad” in front of Prime Minister Narendra Modi at an event.

Fact: The video is edited. In the original 2019 event, Shah Rukh Khan did not mention “jihad.” The “jihad” audio was taken from a 2011 event in Pune, where he spoke at a book launch. The viral video combines old audio with unrelated footage. Hence the claim is MISLEADING.

To verify the truth, we conducted a reverse image search, which led us to the same video uploaded on YouTube in October 2019. The description states that the event was Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s interaction with members of the film fraternity. In the original video, Shah Rukh Khan does not mention “jihad” at all. Instead, he is seen appreciating the Prime Minister for the Swachh Bharat initiative and talking about the need for a ‘Gandhi 2.0’ in the current context.

Furthermore, we found several reports about the same event where Shah Rukh Khan spoke (here, here and here). These reports mention that Prime Minister Narendra Modi interacted with Bollywood actors and filmmakers, including Shah Rukh Khan and Aamir Khan, to discuss initiatives marking the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. The reports also quote parts of Shah Rukh Khan’s speech from the event, but none of them mention anything about him talking about “jihad.” This confirms that the viral video has been manipulated.

To trace the origin of the background ‘jihad’ audio, we searched using appropriate keywords and found several YouTube Shorts of Shah Rukh Khan delivering the exact same lines heard in the viral video (here, here and here). A reverse image search of these clips led us to the original full video uploaded by tejgyan. The description states that Shah Rukh Khan released the book “The Source: Power of Happy Thoughts” at Ganesh Kala Krida Rangmanch, Pune, on 14 November 2011.

In the original video, at around the 09:30 mark, Shah Rukh Khan can clearly be heard making the statement about ‘jihad’ where he says: “I belong to Islam, I am a Muslim. We have a word that is misused a lot: Jihad. The thought process behind Jihad is exactly the same: fighting and conquering the evil thoughts within us is called Jihad. Killing people on the streets is not Jihad.” This confirms that the viral video was edited by overlaying old audio from a different event onto the 2019 footage.

To sum up, the video of Shah Rukh Khan has been edited and is shared as though he spoke about ‘jihad’ in front of PM Modi.