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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

Soch Fact CheckReligion & belief

Four people have converted to Islam after a lecture by Indian Islamic televangelist Dr Zakir Naik during FIFA World Cup 2022 in Qatar.

Publisher’s rating: False

The claim concerns an image said to show four people converting to Islam after Dr Zakir Naik spoke during the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. Soch Fact Check investigated the image and the event it purported to depict. Its review identifies the central issue as whether this particular incident happened during the 2022 tournament or at an earlier time: “The incident took place in 2016, not during the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar.” To trace the image, the investigators removed its overlaid text and searched the resulting image with Google Lens. That led them to a November 2022 video posted by the Facebook page Learn Islam. They then took a screenshot from that video and used TinEye reverse image search, which led to a 27 May 2016 tweet by Qatari journalist Jaber al-Harmi. The tweet’s caption, translated in the review, says four people declared their conversion after Naik’s lecture in Katara, Qatar. The review also says Naik’s verified Facebook page confirmed his 2016 tour to Qatar. Taken together, the earlier tweet and the tour confirmation place the depicted conversion event in 2016, rather than at the 2022 World Cup. The review reports no comparable incident during the tournament; it concludes that the claim’s World Cup timing is unsupported.