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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

Four people converted to Islam in the presence of Zakir Naik during the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerns a video said to show four people accepting Islam in Zakir Naik’s presence during the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. FACTLY compared the circulating video with earlier videos and reports to identify when the depicted event took place. Its review says that the visuals in the circulating video match a YouTube video uploaded on 27 May 2016, titled “4 people converted to Islam immediately after the end of Zakir Naik’s lecture at Katara.” The review then describes a further comparison: it says the visuals also match a video uploaded by Al Jazeera Mubasher on 29 May 2016. According to that video’s description, four people accepted Islam during Naik’s lecture titled “Does God Exist?” The review reports that Katara, the Cultural Village Foundation, hosted the lecture in Qatar on 26 May 2016, and that the four people went on stage after the lecture. This places the event shown in the video more than six years before the 2022 tournament. The review distinguishes the earlier event from the claim about the World Cup: it reports no such conversion during the ongoing 2022 tournament in Naik’s presence. Its conclusion rests on matching the video’s visuals to material associated with the 2016 lecture, rather than on the claim’s description of the footage as a World Cup-era event.

FACTLYReligion & belief

Screenshot of a newspaper advertisement clipping mentioning the rewards for converting non-Muslim girls to Islam

Publisher’s rating: MISLEADING

The claim concerns a screenshot of a newspaper clipping that appears to offer rewards for converting non-Muslim girls to Islam. The review identifies the clipping as published by the Madhya Pradesh-based Hindi daily Sanjha Lokswami on 02 November 2017, and says the newspaper presented the rate cards within a news report about Love Jihad and alleged use of fake notaries—not as advertisements issued by Muslims. The distinction is central: the clipping’s appearance in a newspaper does not establish that the newspaper was publishing an advertisement from the group it describes. [S1: “The news clipping shared in the post was published by the Sanjha Lokswami newspaper on 02 November 2017. Sanjha Lokswami published these rate cards as part of a news report it published about Love Jihad and exposing an alleged love jihad procedure using fake notaries. These are not advertisements issued by Muslims.”] To trace the clipping, the review says it examined the image and noticed “Sanjha Lokswami” above a rate card. It then searched online using relevant keywords and found the same clipping photo in a Facebook post by Sanjha Lokswami journalist Nilesh Nagar, dated 02 November 2017. The review describes Nagar’s post as presenting the clipping as a news story about an alleged conspiracy involving conversions in the name of love and fake notaries. [S1: “On observing the news clipping screenshot carefully, one could see the Hindi text ‘Sanjha Lokswami’ on top of the rate card. Sanjha Lokswami is a Madhya Pradesh-based Hindi daily newspaper. When we searched for this news clipping using relevant keywords on the internet, we found the same news clipping photo in a Facebook post published by Sanjha Lokswami journalist Nilesh Nagar on 02 November 2017.”] The review also discusses another card in the clipping, with a love-and-arrow symbol and a Hezbollah flag logo. It traces that card’s earlier appearance to a “Sikhs and Islam” blog story dated 05 February 2010, and notes that news websites reported the cards as fake in 2014. However, the review says it could not establish the cards’ exact source. Its conclusion therefore rests on the documented newspaper context: the cards were presented as part of a news story, rather than shown to be an advertisement issued by Muslims. [S1: “This rate card first appeared in a story published by the ‘Sikhs and Islam’ blog page on 05 February 2010. A few news websites published articles in 2014 reporting these Islamic conversion rate cards as fake.”] [S1: “Though we could not ascertain the exact source of these rate cards, from the above pieces of evidence, it can be concluded that the rate card in the news clipping shared in the post is not an advertisement by Muslims.”]

dpaReligion & belief

Een rabbi legt uit hoe Joden de wereld overheersen.

Publisher’s rating: Het interview is nep en heeft enkel als doel om antisemitische stereotypen te bevestigen. De man achter het interview is een gekende antisemiet wiens doel is om haat tegenover Joden aan te wakkeren.

The claim refers to clips of a radio interview in which a supposed rabbi, Abe Finkelstein, appears to explain how Jews supposedly control the world. The review says a Facebook user cut and edited the interview into multiple videos. It identifies the interviewer as James Wickstrom and describes him as a notorious American racist and antisemite. The interview itself is at least as old as July 18, 2007, and is transcribed in full in the Internet Archive. The excerpts do not establish when the original interview was recorded. The review’s central finding is that Finkelstein was invented by Wickstrom, rather than being a real rabbi whose interview disclosed a genuine conspiracy. It describes the exchange as Wickstrom putting antisemitic conspiracy theories to the guest, who affirms them or intensifies them. The examples listed include fabricated claims about child sacrifice, cannibalism at McDonald’s and the September 11 attacks. The review also notes that the supposed rabbi’s exaggerated performance and misuse of Yiddish expressions fit antisemitic stereotypes, and that online searches for him led only to the interview. The review further checks a blog from 2006 that presented Finkelstein as real. It says the blog contained only three posts, promoted the same supposed interview, and used a photograph associated with Finkelstein that was actually of lawyer Kenneth Feinberg. The review describes the blog’s author and organizations as fictitious and concludes that the blog appears to have been created to lend the interview credibility. Taken together, the described interview history and the lack of independent evidence for Finkelstein support the finding that the video is a fabricated antisemitic parody, not a genuine rabbi’s account.