Skip to main content

PeakMetrics / Fact Checks

Religion & belief fact checks

Explore claims publishers have checked about religion & belief. Read their original ratings and follow the evidence.

3,371 published reviews in this topic

NewtralReligion & belief

La Iglesia de Suecia ha nombrado a Greta Thunberg «sucesora de Jesucristo»

Publisher’s rating: Engañoso

The claim concerns whether Sweden’s national church officially named Greta Thunberg the successor of Jesus. Newtral reports that headlines making this claim began circulating in December 2018, but says the post behind them came from a Swedish parish, not from the church’s national authority. The review notes that “Church of Sweden” is the official name of the country’s highest Protestant religious authority, making the distinction between a parish and the institution central to assessing the claim. According to the review, the Church of Sweden told Newtral that it had “totally disassociated” itself from the message because it did not represent the institution. Thus, the evidence supports a narrower account: a parish published a tweet describing Thunberg as Jesus’s successor, while the national church rejected that message as its own position. The review does not say that the tweet was never published; it explains why attributing it to the national church is misleading.

The QuintReligion & belief

Muslims offering last prayer in Babri Mosque

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim attached to the circulating image was that it showed Muslim men offering the last prayer at the site where the Babri Masjid once stood, before the place was handed over to Hindu administration. The Quint’s review says the Supreme Court’s Ayodhya judgment directed that Hindus would receive the disputed land, subject to conditions. It concludes that the image was genuine, but that the claim about where and when the prayer took place was false. To check the image’s location, the review describes searching for “Namaz Delhi mosque” after a comment suggested it might show a Delhi mosque. The search turned up an image showing the same structure; the site hosting it identified the location as Jami Masjid in the Feroz Shah Kotla area. The review says the investigators then used Google Maps to find the mosque’s location. The review also reports finding the same image on India Times, where it had been uploaded in 2008, and dates the photograph to December 2008 at a mosque in New Delhi’s Feroz Shah Kotla area. That provenance places the photograph well before the Ayodhya verdict and rules out the claim that it shows a final prayer at the former Babri Masjid site. The Quint states that the photograph itself had not been altered.

Fact CrescendoReligion & belief

Claim: Hindu temple hidden inside of a mosque in Karnataka

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerned a social-media image presented as a huge Hindu temple uncovered when a mosque in Raichur, Karnataka, was demolished for road widening. The review says the post appeared on Facebook on November 22, 2019, and that its image carried text alleging a hidden shrine had been exposed. The question was not whether road-widening work had affected religious buildings, but whether the image showed a temple inside the mosque and whether that discovery had happened. Evidence cited in the review supports the former event—demolition work affecting religious sites—but not the alleged discovery: “2016ம் ஆண்டு சாலை விரிவாக்கப் பணிக்காக ரெய்ச்சூரில் கட்டிடங்கள் இடிக்கப்பட்டதாக தி இந்து செய்தி வெளியிட்டிருந்தது. அதில் இரண்டு மசூதி மற்றும் ஒரு கோவிலில் சில பகுதிகள் மட்டும் இடிக்கப்பட்டதாக கூறப்பட்டு இருந்தது.” The review describes tracing the striking cave-temple image to its creator. It says the creator shared it as a digital artwork, without identifying it as a Raichur temple, and explains that a commenter asked where it was from. The review quotes the creator’s reply: “இது என்னுடைய டிஜிட்டல் படைப்பு”. It also reports that the cave image was from China’s Longmen Grottoes and that AFP compared the digital artwork with an image of the grottoes. Thus, the image used to support the claim was not photographic evidence of a newly uncovered Raichur shrine. The review distinguishes the image’s fabrication from a later allegation about mosque columns. It reports that two months after the 2016 demolition, a newspaper described Hindu organizations alleging that Hindu temple pillars were inside a mosque and calling for an investigation; that is an attributed allegation, not confirmation of a temple being uncovered. The review says contemporaneous reporting on the demolition did not mention a temple inside the mosque, and that the alleged hidden-temple story surfaced months later. It concludes that the social-media post’s image and accompanying claim were false. The article’s printed result is “False.”

YouturnReligion & belief

சென்னை உயர் நீதிமன்றம் ஜார்ஜ் டெளன் கன்னிகா பரமேஸ்வரி கோவில் இடத்தில் உள்ளது என்பதை நினைவூட்ட ஆண்டிற்கு ஒரு நாள் 7 வாயிலையும் பூட்டி சாவியை இட உரிமையாளர் கன்னிகா பரமேஸ்வரி கோவிலிடம் ஒப்படைக்கப்படும்.

Publisher’s rating: Fake