A Ramadan TV ad by a Middle Eastern telecommunications company in which victims of terrorism confront a suicide bomber and urge society to “bomb violence with mercy” has provoked a heated debate in the region, with some praising its attempt to tackle extremism and others criticising it for using victims of bombings and a simplistic portrayal of terrorists. 
 
 The three-minute video by Zain, a commercial mobile operator based in Kuwait, went viral over the weekend with some calling for it to be withdrawn, while others praised its tagline of “we will counter their attacks of hatred with songs of love, from now until happiness”. 
 
 The video begins with images of a militant preparing a suicide vest interspersed with shots of a man and woman preparing for their wedding, a grandfather playing with a child, and children in a classroom. It opens with a voiceover by a child, saying: “I will tell God everything, that you’ve filled the cemeteries with our children and emptied our school desks.” 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest The advert from the Kuwaiti mobile operator Zain. 
 
 As the suicide bomber travels to his destination, he is confronted by victims of terrorism, covered in blood and dirt, including a child actor playing the role of Omran Daqneesh, the child from Aleppo whose bloodied image after he survived an airstrike by the Syrian government was seen around the world. 
 
 It also features a bride who survived the bombing of a wedding hall in Amman in Jordan, a man who lost his son in a massive car bombing in Baghdad, Iraq, and another who survived a suicide attack on a Shia mosque in Kuwait. 
 
 At various points in the video, victims of terror attempt to reclaim the bomber’s religious invocations – when he declares “there is no god but Allah”, a man carrying a child on a bus retorts: “You who comes in the name of death, he is the creator of life.” When the bomber says “God is greater”, a schoolteacher responds: “Than those who obey without contemplation.” 
 
 As the bomber flees, the victims are joined by Hussein al-Jasmi, an Emirati pop star, in a chorus urging people to respond to anger with kindness, and violence with mercy. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Those playing victims of terror in the video attempt to reclaim the bomber’s religious invocations. Photograph: Youtube 
 
 TV viewing in the Arab world usually skyrockets during Ramadan, when Muslims are expected to fast from dawn until sunset. Countless new soap operas are aired during the day and through the breakfast meal and well into the night, along with new advertisements and TV shows starring the region’s top actors. 
 
 But few ads addressing the issue of extremism have stirred as much debate as the Zain video. Anti-extremism campaigns have in the past focused on Iraq in particular, and were often shorter videos with a grimmer approach, little musicality and tag lines such as “terrorism has no religion”. 
 
 The Zain spot faced criticism from social media users even as some praised its tackling of a sensitive topic, with many Syrians condemning its use of an actor to play Omran, pointing out that the boy was wounded in an airstrike by the regime of Bashar al-Assad rather than in an attack by Muslim extremists. They argued that the majority of victims of violence in Syria had suffered at the hands of the regime, rather than jihadis. 
 
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 “The child Omran is a victim of Assad’s barrel bombs and not the terrorism of Daesh,” wrote Kutaiba Yassin, a Syrian writer, using a synonym for Islamic State. “Part of justice for any victim is to expose his killer. Zain’s ad distorts the truth.” 
 
 
 
 Some also felt it was inappropriate for a corporation to use the images of victims of terrorism in a commercial spot, arguing it was exploitative. 
 
 But one Facebook comment said: “It’s wonderful. We need these beautiful words these days. I wish those words are applied through actions in the Muslim world.” 
 
 One of the common critiques of the ad, however, was that extremism is a more complex phenomenon that requires a broader effort by society at large. 
 
 “Everyone loves to cry ‘extremism’ and ‘Isis’ and nobody wants to really address the political reasons behind their strength,” said Tamara al-Rifai, a Syrian communications expert. “What’s the ad saying? We are trying to criminalise these acts of violence as a society, correct? Who are we talking to? The criminals? They will laugh at us. 
 
 “Then we are talking to each other, the ones who blame some hazy dark forces for everything without really going to the crux of why they exist to start with,” she added. ||||| A hard-hitting video advertisement of a suicide bomber being challenged by victims of terrorism has gone viral in the Middle East. 
 
 Kuwaiti telecom company Zain launched the TV ad on Saturday at the start of Ramadan, the holiest month in the Muslim calendar, in an effort to counter terrorism. 
 
 Since then, the three minute music video has been viewed nearly 2.4 million times on YouTube. 
 
 The opening scenes show a man manufacturing a suicide belt, with the voice of a child challenging him. 
 
 "You've filled the cemeteries with our children and emptied our school desks," a young girl is heard saying. 
 
 Zain, a regional mobile operator with more than 45 million customers, did not respond to requests for comment. 
 
 But the message of the company's ad is unmistakeable. 
 
 "Worship your God with love, with love not terror," sings Hussain Al Jassmi, an Emirati star famous in the region for singing in a range of Arabic dialects. "Be tender in your faith, gentle not harsh. Confront your enemy, with peace not war." 
 
 Ramadan is typically a huge month for TV audiences as families gather to break their dawn-to-dusk fast and watch TV shows together. Advertisers spend a large proportion of their budget during the month. 
 
 Related: McDonald's pulls ad about a boy whose father died 
 
 Zain has struck a chord before with its creative ads. Its spot last year carrying a message of peace was viewed 13 million times while its Eid holiday ad, which marked the end of Ramadan, had more than 24 million views. 
 
 The telecom firm appears to have grabbed most of the attention again this year. 
 
 What a beautiful ad on counter violence & extremism. Only Kuwait could do this. Thank you @Zain and @7sainaljassmi https://t.co/Z4Ja5Udf7H — سلطان سعود القاسمي (@SultanAlQassemi) May 28, 2017 
 
 This latest project recreates the aftermath of a bus bombing as the suicide bomber walks through the carnage. He looks at the injured people covered in dust, including a young boy with a bloodied face on an orange chair. 
 
 He resembles a young Syrian boy, Omran Daqneesh, whose image went viral after he was rescued from Aleppo last year. 
 
 The terrorist recites Islamic phrases but he is corrected by those sitting in front of him. 
 
 The ad also features survivors of previous attacks including a man from the blast at a Kuwaiti mosque in 2015 and a bride from an attack on a wedding in Amman, Jordan, in 2005. 
 
 The terrorist is chased away by the survivors while singer Al Jassmi extends a hand to him and sings "Let's bomb, let's bomb, let's bomb violence with mercy... let's bomb extremism for a better life." 
 
 "What a beautiful ad on counter violence & extremism. Only Kuwait could do this," tweeted a prominent Emirati writer, Sultan Al Qassemi. 
 
 A series of deadly attacks in recent days has underlined the global nature of the terrorist threat. Attacks in the U.K. and Egypt left dozens dead, including many children. Both were claimed by ISIS. 
 
 Fighting has been raging between Islamic State fighters and government forces in the Philippines this week, and Indonesian police believe suicide attacks last week in Jakarta were also linked to ISIS. ||||| It sounds like another terrifying story of insurgent terrorism in the Middle East: on Tuesday, men dressed in the black garb of the Islamic State stormed through a mall in Iran, brandishing swords and guns, shouting “Allahu Akbar”. Shoppers reportedly fled the scene in fear. 
 
 It was reminiscent of the 2017 Tehran Isis attacks in which 17 people were killed. Except that the mall “attack” was actually a Punk’d style prank. The weapons were fake, and the presumed terrorists were actually actors. The whole incident was a piece of viral marketing for a film called Damascus Time about an Iranian father and son who are kidnapped by Isis. Some shoppers worked out what was going in and filmed the stunt on camera phones, but others can be heard screaming in terror. 
 
 The film’s director has since apologised – he said he had not been expecting one of the actors to arrive on horseback – but he is far from the first person to pull this kind of stunt. He was just following a tradition of prank terror plots begun by American teenagers. 
 
 There are so many videos of fake terrorist atrocities that you can watch entire compilations of unsuspecting members of the public, running, screaming and vomiting in fear. Most of them have been created by young western YouTube stars, many with millions of subscribers. They tend to involve someone dressed in stereotypical Arabic clothing, dropping a package at the feet of some strangers and running away. In one clip, people drinking on a boat all jump into the sea after a bag is thrown aboard. In another, laughing emojis flash on the screen when a man urinates on himself in fear after being surprised in a public restroom. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest A “prank” video of terror attacks by Joey Salads has been viewed 3.3m times. 
 
 Joey Salads, a YouTuber with 2 million subscribers, has become notorious for these kinds of pranks. He tries to couch his videos as a “social experiments”, claiming to compare reactions between a man shouting “Allahu Akbar” when he drops a steel box on the floor with that of a man in western dress saying “praise Jesus”. Unsurprisingly, people are more distressed by the former prank, but the videos say less about Islamophobia than they do about the wild west of YouTube content, where pranksters seem to be able to get away with almost anything, with little interference from the site. 
 
 Last year, the British YouTuber Arya Mosallah, who had 650,000 subscribers, apologised after he made prank videos in which he approached strangers for a conversation and then threw liquid in their faces and ran away, leading them to believe they were victims of an acid attack, common in Britain at the time. Re-uploaded versions of the video can still be viewed on YouTube. 
 
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 Some of these pranks seem too horrifying to be real, and in some cases they aren’t. Sam Pepper, a YouTuber with 2.3 million subscribers, apologised for faking a prank in which he appeared to kill someone’s best friend in front of him – admitting everyone in the video knew what was happening. In his apology, he said the pressure in the pranking community to make new videos led him to fake some of his content – a very odd version of peer pressure. 
 
 YouTube has said videos like Pepper’s do not violate its community guidelines and the site rarely removes prank videos. In most cases it’s more likely that the police will get involved than online moderators. Australian pranksters the Jalal Brothers were arrested by anti-terror police after they faked a series of terror attacks, including aiming a fake AK-47 at a small child. They later admitted that that video was entirely staged, but the police had not been not aware. 
 
 Despite the dangers and clear distress involved, new videos are emerging all the time. At this point, many people are more likely to be caught up in a faked YouTube prank than an actual terror attack.
– As the Muslim holy month of Ramadan kicked off over the weekend, so, too, did an ad by a telecom company in Kuwait tackling terrorism. CNN reports on Zaid's three-minute music video, which has so far amassed more than 3.6 million views, showing a suicide bomber being confronted by victims (some of them actual victims of past terror attacks) in the wake of a bus bombing. "You've filled the cemeteries with our children and emptied our school desks," a child's voiceover notes as the man works on his weapon, while others refute him after the act has been carried out. "I bear witness that there is no God but Allah," he tells a busload of dust-covered passengers, to which one man responds, "You who comes in the name of death, He is the creator of life." The terrorist is then driven out by a crowd, with one man singing phrases such as, "Let's bomb delusion with the truth." The Guardian notes TV viewing spikes in Arab communities during Ramadan, as people hunker down at home to fast. The video is earning praise, with one prominent Emirati commentator calling it "a beautiful ad on counter violence and extremism" on Twitter. Yet others were rankled by the fact that terrorism victims were featured (some say it's exploitative) and that an actor played the part of Omran Daqneesh, the child in a now-famous photo out of Syria after his home was hit in an airstrike. "Part of justice for any victim is to expose his killer," one writer notes, pointing out the real Omran wasn't attacked by extremists but by the Syrian regime. Still others say the ad just preaches to the choir and doesn't get to the heart of what drives terrorism. "What's the ad saying? … The criminals … will laugh at us," a Syrian communications expert says. (A US airport's anti-terror efforts.)