No, this video shows men throwing stones in a mosque in the state of Rajasthan

This article is more than one year old.
Published on July 22, 2019 at 10:10
Updated on July 22, 2019 at 14:17
2 min read
By AFP India

A video has been viewed tens of thousands of times and shared in multiple Facebook posts which claim it shows Muslim men hurling stones at Hindu women who were singing devotional songs inside a temple near New Delhi, in the north Indian state of Haryana. The claim is false; the video has circulated online since at least 2015; it shows men throwing stones into a mosque in Rajasthan in India’s north west.

The one-minute-thirty-five-second video was shared here in a Facebook post on July 7, 2019. It has been viewed more than 27,000 times.

The post's Hindi language caption translates to English as: “A group of peace-loving Muslims pelted stones inside a temple yesterday evening in Atali, Faridabad, while some women were performing kirtan inside. A smart woman recorded this video which has spread across the entire country. It will not be aired on any TV channel.”

Atali is a small town in the north Indian state of Haryana and about one hundred kilometres west of New Delhi.

Kirtan refers to devotional songs sung at places of worship during religious rituals by Hindu and Sikhs.

Below is a screenshot of the misleading Facebook post:

Screenshot of misleading Facebook post

The video has been shared in several other Facebook posts, for example here, here, here and here with the same claim.

The claim is false; the video has circulated online since at least 2015 and shows men throwing stones into a mosque -- not a temple -- in the north Indian city of Jaipur.

The same video was published here on YouTube and here on Facebook, where it has been viewed collectively almost 650,000 times since it was uploaded on July 3, 2015.

Below is a screenshot of the video published on YouTube:

Snapshot of YouTube video

Through analysing user comments on various posts which included the video, AFP found the video showed Jama Masjid mosque in Jaipur.

A search on Google maps found user photos, including this one published in March 2018, tagged at Jama Masjid in Jaipur, which corresponded with the video in the misleading posts.

Below is an image comparison of screenshots of the video in the misleading Facebook posts (L) and the Google user image of the Jama mosque (R) with similar elements highlighted in red:

Image comparing screenshots

A keyword search found the video was published here in a Facebook post on July 2, 2015, alongside a claim that it shows a fight between two Muslim groups at a mosque in the town of Sanganer, Jaipur.

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