This video shows an incident in Pakistan sparked by a land dispute

This article is more than one year old.
Published on August 24, 2020 at 05:00
2 min read
By AFP India

A video has been viewed thousands of times in multiple posts on Facebook and Twitter alongside a claim it shows a crowd uprooting saplings in Pakistan because planting trees goes against Islamic law. The claim, however, is misleading; the video shows an incident in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region that was sparked by a land dispute; in Islam, planting trees is considered an act of charity.

The one-minute and seven-second video was published here on Facebook on August 10, 2020. It has been viewed more than 5,500 times.

Screenshot of the misleading Facebook post taken on August 18, 2020.

The post’s caption reads: “Imran Khan copied PM Shri Modi’s ‘Tree Plantation Drive’ in Pakistan but his followers uprooted all trees because they feel 'Planting trees is against Islam'."

The second part of the caption in Hindi translates to English as: “Thank you Jinnah uncle for taking all the buffoons with you to the other side.”

Imran Khan is the prime minister of Pakistan. On August 8, 2020, Khan tweeted that as many trees as possible should be planted across the country.

PM Shri Modi refers to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Muhammed Ali Jinnah is the founder of Pakistan.

The video was also shared here and here on Facebook; and here and here on Twitter with a similar claim.

The claim, however, is false.

A reverse image search on Yandex found a similar video was published here on Facebook on August 9, 2020. The caption reads: “Khyber agency people angry planted trees on their land without permission."

Below is a screenshot comparison of the video in the misleading posts (L) and the Facebook video from Khyber agency (R):

The incident in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region was reported by several local media outlets: for example here by Pakistani news site Khabar Naamaa; here by Pakistani newspaper The News International; and here by Pakistani news channel Saama TV.

Dawn, an English-language daily newspaper in Pakistan, published a similar report here on August 10, 2020.

The report reads in part: “Speaking to Dawn.com, a district administration official said that there was a dispute between two powerful tribes over the ownership of the land. 'One of the parties was present when the campaign was inaugurated, while the other was unaware about the drive and uprooted the saplings,' he said.”

In Islam, planting trees is considered an act of charity.

In the book Sahih al-Bukhari, regarded as one of the most trusted collections of Prophet Muhammad’s quotes and verses, a verse attributed to Muhammad reads: "There is none amongst the Muslims who plants a tree or sows seeds, and then a bird, or a person or an animal eats from it, but is regarded as a charitable gift for him."

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