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Jordanian Islamic scholar Dr. Ahmad Al-Shahrouri said in an April 12, 2020 show on Yarmouk TV (Jordan) that MEMRI has been monitoring his show and taking statements of his out of context in order to incite against him and against Islamic thought. He said that as a result of MEMRI reports about him, the U.S.-based Arabic-language Al-Hurra TV invited him in order to discuss a statement of his in which he said there is a relationship between fighting the coronavirus and fighting Zionism (see MEMRI TV Clip No. 7868). Al-Shahrouri said that Al-Hurra TV had asked him about this in order to get him "all worked up" about the distorted and fabricated information that MEMRI has published against him, and he said that his original statement had been that Zionism should be fought like coronavirus is being fought because it is also a pandemic. He also reiterated a previous statement of his in which he said that Westerners' use of toilet paper is an indication that they have poor hygiene (see MEMRI TV Clip No. 7920).
Ahmad Al-Shahrouri: "An American website called 'MEMRI' has been monitoring my show on this blessed TV channel. (MEMRI) cuts excerpts from the episodes of my show, takes them out of context, and translates them into English in order to incite against me and against Islamic thought. I was really intrigued by what the MEMRI website has been doing, and by its repeated quoting of me and clipping of my show. Time and again, MEMRI has been quoted by media outlets.
"One time, MEMRI’s report was picked up by the American Arabic-language TV channel, Al-Hurra TV. Al-Hurra TV invited me to talk about some of the superstitions circulated by some religious scholars. I won’t hide from you. As I was going to Al-Hurra's headquarters in Amman, the question kept nagging at me: Why did they pick me, Ahmad Al-Shahrouri, out of the thousands of shari'a experts, and out of the thousands of Islamic members of the media? What do they want from Ahmad Al-Shahrouri? But then I was asked the first question by the TV host in America. She said: 'You, Ahmad Al-Shahrouri, said that fighting Israel or Zionism is the path to fight the coronavirus.'
"Then and there, I knew why they had invited me. They wanted to see me all worked up over what MEMRI had published against me. MEMRI took things out of context, things that distorted my statement. I immediately told the TV host that the recording is out there, and that what I had said was that the coronavirus was a pandemic, and that the Zionists also constitute a pandemic, and just like we fight the coronavirus, we should fight Zionism. But see how they had distorted what I had said, and turned me into a superstitious individual, who says the coronavirus can only be fought by fighting Zionism. This is a kind of deliberate fabrication. I answered (MEMRI) but they refused to apologize or to remove the report from their site. They doubled down and insisted on this deliberate falsification and fabrication.
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"What I said was that in the West, they do not know what the cleanliness is. They hoard toilet paper, which can no longer be found in the markets. Yesterday, I heard that someone in America beat up his mother because she had hidden the toilet paper from him. All I said was that Westerners should be clean and pure, in order to protect themselves from diseases."
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