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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

FACTLYReligion & belief

Raja Singh’s sister Maya Devi has accepted Islam.

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The post claimed that a girl pictured in a social-media image was Maya Devi, Raja Singh’s sister, and that she had recently converted to Islam. The review says its investigation found the pictured woman was instead Athira, also known by her converted name Ayesha, a woman from Kerala who had converted two years earlier and had no connection with Raja Singh. Thus, the image did not establish the family relationship asserted in the post. [S1]

Fact CrescendoReligion & belief

Claim: Sri Lanka arrested a Muslim man for reading Quran on air

Publisher’s rating: MIXTURE

The review examined a Facebook post alleging that Sri Lankan authorities detained a Muslim man for 12 hours simply because he read the Quran aboard a flight. It describes the reported incident as taking place on May 23, on a SriLankan Airlines flight from Melbourne to Colombo. The airline’s account, as recounted in the review, said passengers had complained about the man’s conduct: he allegedly behaved inappropriately toward other passengers and repeatedly engaged them in religious discussion. The airline said he was detained during the flight and handed to Criminal Investigation Department police after the plane landed in Colombo. The review says it searched for evidence about whether a Muslim passenger had been detained for reading the Quran and examined the airline’s explanation. That account attributed the action to security concerns following recent terrorist attacks, rather than to the passenger’s religious reading. The review also reports the airline’s statement that 12 of its employees were Muslim and that five Muslim passengers were on the flight; it cited this as context for the airline’s position that the action was based on this passenger’s reported conduct, not on Muslims generally. The evidence therefore supports that the passenger was detained, but does not support the post’s assertion that Quran reading was the reason. The review characterizes the post’s broader claims about anti-Muslim intent and a boycott as the poster’s own interpretation, not as established facts. The excerpt does not include the airline’s original statement itself, so the airline’s account is reported here as presented by the review.

The QuintReligion & belief

Has Jagan Mohan Reddy converted to Hinduism?

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerned a viral video said to show Andhra Pradesh chief minister-designate Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy converting from Christianity to Hinduism. The accompanying post also claimed that a swami had set the date of Reddy’s swearing-in ceremony. The Quint reports that the video did not show a conversion: it was an older recording of a Hindu ritual Reddy performed in Rishikesh in 2016, which the review says was intended to seek special status for Andhra Pradesh. To investigate the video’s provenance, the review describes a frame-by-frame analysis using InVID, followed by reverse searches of the frames on Yandex. Those searches led to a post identifying the footage as Reddy performing a pooja in Rishikesh for special status. The review then searched YouTube using the terms “Jagan,” “Rishikesh,” “Pooja” and “special status,” and found a Sakshi TV video shared on 9 August 2016. The review says that video contained visuals from the viral clip and described Reddy as performing a special pooja for Andhra Pradesh’s special category status. The review further identifies the ritual as Homam, a Hindu ritual, based on another Sakshi TV video showing the pooja. Thus, the evidence presented identifies the viral footage as an earlier religious ritual, not a conversion ceremony. The claim’s interpretation of the footage as a conversion is not supported by the review’s account of the original video and its contemporaneous description.