Photos misused to spread false claim controversial Indonesian Islamic school 'raised pigs'
- Published on August 6, 2023 at 11:23
- 6 min read
- By AFP Indonesia
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"Crazy. Hundreds of pigs were discovered at Al-Zaytun Islamic boarding school," reads Indonesian-language sticker text on a video posted on TikTok on July 13, 2023.
"They belong to Panji Gumilang," the sticker text also says, referring to a 77-year-old Muslim cleric who heads the school (archived link).
The 47-second clip, which shows various photos of pigs, has been viewed more than seven million times.
The video also features the voice of a male narrator who claims Panji is raising hundreds of wild boars and pigs -- considered "haram" or forbidden for Muslims -- inside the boarding school complex (archived link).
The post circulated after Al-Zaytun, an Islamic boarding school in Indonesia's West Java province, sparked uproar among conservative Muslim circles for allowing women to pray in the same row as men and to give Friday sermons, as well as for singing a Hebrew folk song "Havenu Shalom Aleichem" (archived links here, here and here).
On August 2, 2023, Panji -- who founded the 5,000-strong school in 1999 -- was arrested on charges of blasphemy and hate speech and faces years in jail.
The video has been viewed more than 73,000 times after it was shared with a similar claim on Facebook here, here and here; as well as on TikTok here and here.
Some social media users appeared to believe the claim.
"They must be for the students to consume.. oh God," commented one TikTok user.
"They are meant to be sold, friends, generating a lot of revenue," wrote another.
Muslims are prohibited not only from eating but also selling pork (archived link).
However, the claim is false. Reverse image and keyword searches on Google and Yandex found the photos are unrelated to Al-Zaytun and AFP has not found any credible reports about pigs on the campus.
Unrelated photos
The opening of the video shows a photo of a group of individuals, some dressed in camouflage military uniforms, examining what looks like a shack.
This photo was published by Indonesian online media Batam Line on February 16, 2021, in a report about the demolition of several pigsties near an airport at the city of Batam, in Indonesia's Riau Islands province (archived link).
The report says that the pigsties were demolished because they encroached on a forest zone.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the false video (left) and the genuine picture from Batam Line (right):
At the six-second mark, the false video shows an image of a uniformed man standing near a pig pen.
The photo previously appeared in a CNBC Indonesia report, dated May 9, 2023, about an African swine fever outbreak on Batam Island (archived link).
The photo is captioned "A pig farm in Batam, Riau Islands" and is credited to the Agricultural Quarantine Office.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the false video (left) and the genuine picture from CNBC Indonesia (right):
The image at the 19-second mark of the false video, which shows a man in a uniform near a pigpen, was published by the Jakarta Post on April 1, 2020 (archived link).
The Jakarta Post's photo is captioned: "A Tanjung Pinang Agricultural Quarantine Office official in Riau Islands inspects pigs set to be exported to Singapore on Sunday, March 29."
Below is a screenshot comparison of the false video (left) and the genuine picture from the Jakarta Post (right):
The image shown at the 24-second mark of the false video actually shows police officers inspecting a pig in the eastern Indonesian province of Papua, published by state-run Antara news agency on September 1, 2020 (archived link).
Below is a screenshot comparison of the false video (left) and the genuine picture from Antara (right):
Meanwhile, the last picture, at the 45-second mark of the video, shows a woman posing with a black-haired pig. It appeared in local media outlet Berita Bali's February 2021 interview with a Balinese academic on the topic of pig farming in Bali (archived link).
Black-haired pigs are known as domestic pigs indigenous to Indonesia's Hindu-majority Bali island (archived link).
Dr Budi Rahayu Tanama Putri, the academic interviewed by Berita Bali, told AFP on August 4, 2023: "The photo shows me and a Balinese pig in Nusa Penida, Bali. Not in West Java" (archived link).
Below is a screenshot comparison of the false video (left) and the genuine Berita Bali photo (right):
Other images in the video include an aerial view of Al-Zaytun's campus and a photo of Panji (archived links here and here).
On July 21, 2023, the Indonesian National Police said that a similar claim about the police chief seizing thousands of pigs from Al-Zaytun premises was a hoax (archived link).
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