Indonesian YouTuber slammed for video where he offered money to people to cancel their fast during Ramadan

In the controversial video, Hasan offered pizza to people who are fasting and asked them to cancel their fast for money. — Screenshot from YouTube

An Indonesian YouTuber has come under fire for posting a video showing him approaching Muslims who are fasting for Ramadan and offering them 10mil Indonesian rupiah (RM2,836) to cancel their fast, according to a report by Detik.

Hasan Abdillah, who goes by the name Hasanjr11 on his YouTube channel, posted the 10-minute video on April 27 which detailed how he approached three individuals and one group of children on the first day of Ramadan while secretly recording his conversations with them.

He handed them a box of pizza and told them if they were to eat just one slice to “batal puasa” or cancel their fast, he would give them all the money in a briefcase. Hasan told viewers that he wanted to test the faith of people to see if they would be tempted to cancel their fast for money.

The children ran away when he approached them while the other individuals – a farmer, a street cleaner, and an employee at a swimming pool – all declined his offer.

At the end of each encounter, Hasan claimed that he offered them an undisclosed amount of money in an envelope as a ‘reward’ for not cancelling their fast even when they were offered a huge amount of money to do so. Viewers slammed Hasan's video, deeming it “offensive” and “degrading”.

Kompas reported that Hasan has since removed the video from his YouTube channel and posted an apology on Instagram after viewers slammed his actions. He said he would take all the backlash as a lesson to improve on his content.

Hasan has a major following on YouTube with 4.95 million subscribers, where his content mostly consists of prank videos or so-called social experiment videos such as testing to see if a Gojek rider will honestly deliver a briefcase filled with 100mil Indonesian rupiah (RM28,334) instead of swiping the cash.