Photo of Louvre fertility god statue edited as 'Allah figurine in Kaaba'
- Published on June 17, 2024 at 07:25
- 3 min read
- By Pasika KHERNAMNUOY, AFP Thailand
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"Statue of Allah inside the Kaaba," read a Facebook post in Thai that shared the edited image on May 6, 2024.
The Kaaba is a black cube-shaped building at the centre of the Great Mosque in Mecca. It is the holiest site in Islam, towards which Muslims face when they pray.
The picture shows a horned statue with two right arms stood on a pedestal.
The image surfaced on Facebook ahead of the annual hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, one of the five pillars of Islam, in which 1.8 million Muslims took part this year.
Louvre figurine
However, the picture appears to be edited from a photo of a similar statue on display at the Louvre museum in Paris -- not the Kaaba.
A reverse image search and keyword searches on Google found a photo in an article by the World History Encyclopedia about the fertility and weather god Baal (archived link).
The photo is credited to "Jastrow", a photographer whose real name is Marie-Lan Taÿ Pamart.
Taÿ Pamart confirmed to AFP that she took the photo of the Baal statue at the Louvre.
She also posted the image on Wikimedia Commons in 2006 (archived link).
The figurine is featured on Louvre's website, which said the Baal statue was discovered in 1934 in Syria (archived link).
Below is a screenshot comparison of the edited image (left) and Taÿ Pamart's photo (right), with inconsistencies highlighted by AFP:
Moreover, photos from inside the Kaaba do not show any such statue.
A 360-degree view of the Kaaba's interior posted by the Islamtics website shows the same pedestal and pillars seen in the edited picture -- but with no figurine.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the false image (left) and a mirrored view of the same spot from the 360-view of the Kaaba (right).
Islam prohibits images or statues of Allah.
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