The simple act of screening a few fleeting seconds of a sex scene from a Jackie Chan movie has cost a regional TV producer in Iran his job.

Iran’s Kish Island viewers were mortified when their local TV station showed the martial arts star having sex with a prostitute in one of his films, the semi-official ISNA news agency reports. The country’s strict religious authorities agreed.

The Islamic republic has long frowned on any open displays of affection, let alone sex, being broadcast to the general populace and even men and women holding hands on Iran TV is viewed as forbidden. The interenet is also heavily regulated for the same “crime”, as Breitbart News has reported.

“Clips of immoral scenes of a film featuring Jackie Chan have been circulating on social media which was apparently shown by Kish IRIB,” ISNA reported.

“These scenes which are in total contradiction with the principles of IRIB has ultimately led to the dismissal and reprimand of some of the employees of IRIB in Kish,” it said, adding this included IRIB’s director-general for Kish.

Some Iranians were quick to point no one had lost their job over a fatal bus crash that killed 10 students at Tehran’s Azad University last week.

“Buses turn over, planes crash, ships sink… no one is dismissed… A few seconds of Jackie Chan making love on IRIB and immediately all staff in that section are sacked,” wrote one Twitter user.

IRIB TV presenter Reza Rashidpoor joined the controversy by observing it could have been avoided if IRIB had captioned the scene with a disclaimer maintaining that the actress Chan was involved with is actually his wife.

He was referring to a program last week in which IRIB added a caption to say a couple holding hands on screen were married in real life and therefore viewers should not allow their strict Islamic sensibilities to be affronted.

AFP contributed to this report