Claim: A video shows Maulana Asad Mehmood condemning his father Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s controversial remarks about the Pakistan Army and apologising on his behalf.
Fact: Mehmood made no such comment. The original video, which dates back to 2024, was likely overlaid with AI-generated audio.
On 15 July 2026, a Facebook account named Shahzad Younas Sheikh posted a video of Maulana Asad Mehmood, son of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam – Fazl’s (JUI-F) chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman.
In the 40-second clip, he can be heard condemning his father’s recent controversial remarks about the Pakistan Army. His statement has been translated in English below:
“Today, I want to talk about my father’s remarks about the Pakistan army. What he said was his own opinion. As his son, I am upset over this [Rehman’s remarks] because I think a difference of opinion should be expressed respectfully and responsibly. I deeply apologise if his words hurt anyone’s sentiments. I pray that we are able to behave respectfully and politely with each other despite our differences.”
Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s controversial remarks
On 11 July 2026, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) hosted a rally in Kasur, Punjab where the party’s chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman also addressed the crowd. The party posted an excerpt of his speech on their X account where he spoke about the security situation in Khyber Pakhtunkwa and Balochistan.
During his address, Rehman made remarks about Pakistani soldiers who were martyred in the line of duty. His statement drew backlash on social media, including remarks from high-profile officials, such as Defence Minister Khawaja Asif and Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal who condemned Rehman’s remarks on their X accounts.
On 15 July, a Lahore resident named Mohammad Waqar filed a petition with National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA), seeking action against Rehman for “hurting sentiments” of Pakistani citizens.
Advocate Mudassar Chaudhry appeared on behalf of the petitioner and stated that an application to register a case against the JUI-F chief has been filed with NCCIA, but no action has been taken so far. According to Dawn, Additional District and Sessions Judge Malik Latif has sought a reply from the agency by 17 August.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check first reviewed Mehmood’s X account to see if he had issued an apology on behalf of his father or shared the clip under investigation. Instead, he had retweeted JUI-F’s video in which Rehman made the remarks that drew backlash. Moreover, we couldn’t find any news reports on any such statement by Mehmood.
Mehmood reposts Rehman’s controversial remarks about the Pakistan Army on 12 July 2026.
Soch Fact Check conducted a reverse-image search of the video to trace its original source. It led to an X post by JUI-F, dated 30 November 2024, which included the video under investigation. However, its audio did not match the version shared in the claim.
Left: Video under investigation posted on 15 July 2026. Right: Video posted on JUI’s X account on 30 November 2024.
The caption of the X post, written in Urdu, stated that the video shows Mehmood during a visit to Chichawatni, Punjab at the time. In the five minute and 57-second video, he discussed the political and economic crisis in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, and also condemned the firing on PTI workers during a protest at D-Chowk, Islamabad in November 2024.
Mehmood did not make any apology on behalf of his father as the clip predates the controversy around Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s remarks on the army, which were made this month.
Moreover, a comparison of Mehmood’s video on X with the video in the claim showed that the former features him speaking naturally while the other shows him speaking in a robotic tone. His jaw also appears to be rather stiff, raising the suspicion that its audio might not be authentic.
Soch Fact Check then ran the video through AI-content detection tools to check if the audio was AI-generated. First, we tested it through Hive Moderation AI-Generated Content Detection, which gave the video three types of ratings:
- 0% likely to be AI-generated Video.
- 98.9% likely to have AI-generated Speech.
- 0% likely to be Deepfake.
Result by Hive Moderation.
The results indicated that the video is not, but the audio is likely to be AI-generated.
To further confirm this result, Soch Fact Check ran the video’s audio through Hiya Deepfake Voice Detector. It gave an authenticity score of 1/100 and 7/100 for different parts of the audio, concluding that the sampled voice is “likely a deepfake.”
Results by Hiya Deepfake Voice Detector.
The fact that the original video predates Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s remarks on the army, and the results from AI detection tools confirm that the claim is false. The audio of Maulana Asad Mehmood’s video, condemning his father’s remarks, is likely AI-generated. There is no publicly available evidence to suggest Mehmood made any such remarks recently either.
Virality
Soch Fact Check first came across a viral post on Facebook with as many 15,100 likes, 3,200 shares and a million views. The claim garnered more engagement after being circulated by other accounts, including two posts which received 788 and 319 likes separately.
Conclusion: The audio in the clip is likely AI-generated. Mehmood did not apologise on behalf of the JUI-F chief.