Love Island blogger Murad Merali has apologised after appearing in vile race play videos that have leaked online.
The podcast host and YouTuber has 300k subscribers and is best known for his explosive interviews with Love Island stars and reaction videos to the series’ highs and lows.
The 26 year old has shared an apology video called “Addressing my past…” after videos leaked online that show the YouTuber fetishing black and Asian men.
The videos have been shared alongside captions containing racial slurs that are claimed to have been written by the YouTuber, although Murad denies writing the captions himself.
In a video posted to YouTube, Murad has now addressed the viral videos.
In the video, he says: "First and foremost, the written content is not me, the derogatory comments are not written by me and I will stand by that, this is not who I am.”
"Some of this content is also not me and I can profusely apologise, I take full accountability for how this has come across and how everybody has felt from this content.
"Some of this content is me, not now, not recently in the last five years, six years, not any moment now."
Murad goes on to insist the "vile racist verbiage" in the captions of the screenshots were not written by him.
"I did not write this stuff, people make their own captions, they mix it with their own pictures for their own satisfaction, their own desires or their own fantasies, their ideations, whatever they have and they put it together for their own mental satisfaction for whatever desire that they have as a person," he said.
Murad then claims that he was "severely raped" at the age of 14 "countless times".
He admits the abuse "f***ed me up" and he could "never get it out of my head".
Murad claims that because of the abuse he developed a "foot fetish" and that he started making the explicit videos because he "needed to make money" to escape his abuser.
However, some fans have criticised Murad's apology for deflecting blame from himself.
"Murad Merali constantly tears people apart for their racist behaviour & micro aggressions yet this is the s*** he gets up to behind closed doors you couldn’t write this s*** omg," one fan tweeted.
Another added: "This Murad Merali issue is not a go for people to be homophobic or anti sex work. People have fetishes (some are weird and disturbing) but if it's not ur thing then it's not ur thing. Face ur front and move on. It's the racism slurs that's the issue.”
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