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Made prominent by Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) with 7K Retweets and 9K Likes, but also retweeted by Lalo Dagach and others:

The weather forecast in Sweden vs the weather forecast in Iraq.

An identical video can be seen at Weather Presenter : Sweden vs Iraq uploaded by "Toxic Male".

For those unable to see the videos: The woman giving the forecast for Sweden has all of her hair and neck covered, while the woman giving the forecast for Iraq doesn't have her hair or neck covered, and is wearing a close-fitting pair of pants.

Is the Swedish video made in Sweden, and is it an actual weather forecast (as opposed to something from a movie or a comedy sketch show)?

An older video for the Sweden weather forecast can be seen at Swedish weather report uploaded 6 November 2011. I can see a watermark for svt.se/vader , but various combinations of Sveriges Television hijab väder didn't come up with anything, apart from a villain with a covered face whose name is similar to the Swedish word for weather.

The only latin script I can see in the Iraq weather report is a twitter handle, which seems to be @dhahialfalasi1. That person's YouTube channel has lots of TV broadcasts and his twitter handle is watermarked on them (example). I couldn't find the weather forecast one amongst them. I'm not very skeptical of this video - the uploader doesn't seem to have any agenda, and the video doesn't seem that unusual.

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  • 5
    Seems rather anecdotal to me, whether it's true or not.
    – Erik
    Jul 12, 2017 at 11:24
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    In the clip from 2011, you can see that it is from the Go'kväll show on SVT1. The weather lady is introduced by the host (Joachim Vogel?) as Shadiga, Shadiqa or something similar.
    – Tor-Einar Jarnbjo
    Jul 12, 2017 at 17:44
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    Sorry to be the rain cloud, but is there any reason to cast doubt on the validity of the videos? Two women slightly outside the social-norms for their place of residence isn't all that unusual, even for local TV personalities. For the grasping, desperate, social-commentary undertones... 'You mean people are not a homogenous block within their country! Gasp!'
    – RomaH
    Jul 12, 2017 at 18:52
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    @RomaH the fact that it's tweeted by Paul Watson is a major source of concern: he has a track record of false (and flat out ridiculous) statements. Also, there are many false claims about Muslims in Sweden: half the questions on Skeptics.SE about Sweden are to do with Muslims in Sweden.
    – Andrew Grimm
    Jul 12, 2017 at 19:31
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    just to add to @Tor-EinarJarnbjo's comment, the "Go'kväll show" is similar to the U.S. late night comedy shows. So it should not be taken as representative of what is common in Sweden. On another note, I did live in Sweden many years ago and I think that I sometimes did see news anchors or weather girls wearing a scarf over their head because they were Muslim. So to me it seems possible that a weather girl there dresses in a non-western outfit as long as it is not too unprofessional, I guess. On another hand my experience from there is from nearly 20 years ago so...
    – user24945
    Jul 13, 2017 at 4:27

1 Answer 1

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Yes, it is real. A follow-up to a short-lived and criticised experimental TV series

There was a short-lived experimental series called Halal-TV, produced by Swedish state owned TV network SVT (Sveriges Television), and was inspired by a similar format from the Netherlands, De Meiden van Halal ("Halal Girls").

Halal-TV [was] a Swedish television show, based on the Dutch show De Meiden van Halal. The program [was] hosted by three young veiled Muslim women who portray the Swedish society from their perspective. It consisted of eight episodes and was broadcast on SVT2 in the fall of 2008.

Only 7 episodes were broadcast (the last one was cancelled), the program was criticised even before it started. (Swedish).

Snopes has an article about it

After the controversy with Halal-TV, two of the presenters — Cherin Awad and Khadiga el Khabiry. — were invited to the SVT program Go'kväll to talk about the debate that flared up. At the end of the segment, Khadiga presented the weather, and the screenshot/clip is from that presentation.

The program was broadcast on the channel SVT1, 1815 to 1900 local time, October 29, 2008. Here is the program's entry in National Library of Sweden's media database

Article in Swedish describing the Go'kväll followup and critique to it.

In summary: the screenshot is genuine and it is from Sweden. The program was produced by Swedish state-owned Sveriges Television (SVT) in 2008. The clip is a follow-up to the controvery that Halal-TV caused, in the program Go'kväll. The clip is genuine, it was not a comedy routine, and it was a transient thing and is not a common ocurrence in Sweden.

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    Can you provide evidence that the show is the one in question?
    – Sklivvz
    Aug 7, 2018 at 10:50

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