In its second season, the German broadcaster ARD’s series ‘Asbest’ cast 31-year-old Lebanese actor Maradona Akkouch to play the role of Abdul Kaval. Akkouch has attracted attention in the past for sharing Islamist posts.
The television series ‘Asbest’ is a drama series produced on behalf of ARD Degeto for the ARD media library. One of the series’ prominent actors is Kida Khodr Ramadan, who is particularly well known from the TV series ‘4 Blocks’. The second season was released at the beginning of December. It was directed by Olivia Retzer and Juri Sternburg. The two also decided to hire a highly questionable actor.
The role of Abdul Kaval is played by 31-year-old Lebanese Maradona Akkouch. Akkouch has attracted attention in the past for sharing Islamist posts, as reported by the ÖRR Blog via X. According to the report, he shared a video by Salafist preacher Abul Baraa and a video by the Islamist Furkan community. The Furkan community is an Islamist movement founded in 1994 in Adana (Turkey) by preacher Alparslan Kuytul with branches in Europe and Germany, including Dortmund, Hamburg and Berlin.
Security authorities classify it as an anti-democratic group oriented towards Sharia law and a caliphate, which rejects the secular constitutional state and Western democracy as a ‘man-made’ order. Recently, Akkouch has been presenting himself as somewhat pious. On his Instagram profile, for example, he shared a speech by Ferat Koçak, the directly elected member of the Bundestag for Neukölln, in which Koçak described the AfD as ‘right-wing extremist, inhumane and anti-democratic’.
In this same speech, Koçak also briefly outlines the life of 31-year-old dancer Maradona Akkouch. According to Koçak, Akkouch still does not have a permanent residence permit. Maradona, as Koçak explains, is a paramedic and ‘saves lives every day.’ Nevertheless, he must constantly fear deportation. However, the Left Party politician does not elaborate on Akkouch’s Islamist tendencies.