Authors
A photograph of a woman in a Hijab holding a placard with text written in Hindi is widely shared on social media platforms. The text translates to, “Within Muslims, Shias and Sunnis do not share a brotherhood, but foolish Hindus think that Muslims and Hindus can be brothers.” Newschecker fact check has found the image to be edited.
Twitter users including former CBI director Nageswara Rao posted the image saying, “shared with no comments,” on October 13.
Rao’s tweet had received over eleven thousand likes and had almost four thousand shares within 24 hours but the officer deleted his tweet on October 14. An archived link to his post can be accessed here.
The image was also shared on a Facebook group called ‘I Support Yogi Adityanath’ and a page called ‘India Against Anti-Nationals,’ garnering hundreds of likes and shares in a span of 12 hours.
Factcheck/Verification
To check the authenticity of the image, Newschecker ran a reverse image search on Google and Yandex search engines. The result led us to several images of the women in the viral photograph with varying texts in the placard.
In one of the images, the woman is seen holding a placard that reads, ‘I am a Muslim but I am not Arab. Don’t stereotype me UMW ISA Campaign’
On running a keyword search for the above phrase, we found a personal blog called, ‘One Beauty of Islam.’
In a post titled, ‘Don’t Stereotype Me–UMW 2012 Campaign,’ we found several photographs of people -including the woman in the viral image- holding placards against stereotyping Muslims.
University of Mary Washington, Virginia held the ‘Don’t Stereotype me’ campaign in 2012, more information about the campaign can be found here.
By comparing the photo from 2012 with the viral photograph we found the latter to be edited.
The same image was viral last year and Newschecker had debunked the claim in Hindi. You can read the article here.
The image had been also shared with an edited placard supporting PM Modi before the 2019 general elections.
The placard in Hindi read, “If Modi wanted to make money, he would have done so when he was the CM of Gujarat for 13 years. He doesn’t love the position/power, he only loves his country,” when translated to English.
Conclusion:
A photoshopped image of a woman in hijab holding a placard is being shared to discredit Muslims.
Result: Manipulated media
Our Sources:
Blog posts from 2012 on the campaign, can be accessed here and here.
Social media posts
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