A video of a 2012 protest against a movie in London is falsely shared as Muslims demanding for Britain to be declared an Islamic state
A video (here, here, and here) allegedly depicting a protest is going viral on social media with a claim that it shows Muslims threatening the British government to make England an Islamic country. We fact-check this claim through this article.
Claim: Video of a recent protest in England where Muslims demanded that England be declared an Islamic state.
Fact: The visuals in this viral video are from a 2012 protest by Muslims in London against the movie ‘Innocence of Muslims,’ outside the UK Parliament in Westminster. Hence, the post is False.
To verify the viral claim, we performed a search on the internet using relevant keywords to see if Muslims in the UK have recently gathered for such a protest demanding that England be declared an Islamic state. The search did not yield any credible news reports to validate the viral claim. If such protests had taken place in the UK, many mainstream media outlets would have reported on the matter.
On closer inspection of the viral video, we identified the scenes in the video as showing the area around the Palace of Westminster in London. We were able to find this based on the statue of Richard Coeur de Lion or Richard the Lionheart (a warrior on horseback) seen in the video.
Taking this as a clue, we searched the internet using appropriate keywords and found several videos of the same protest uploaded on 19 October 2012 on the YouTube channel ‘takbeertv’ (here, here, here).
According to the description of these videos, the video is related to the protest held by Muslims in London against a film. This protest was held at the British Parliament House in 2012.
In one of the videos, we can see the same visuals seen in the viral clip, filmed from another angle. Comparing the viral video with this YouTube video, we can conclude that the visuals in the viral video are related to the same protest event.
While searching for more information about this protest, we came across several photos of the same protest on the Alamy Stock Image website (here, here). According to the description of these photos, on 6 October 2012, Muslims in London protested against the film ‘Innocence of Muslims,’ outside the UK Parliament in Westminster, London. The Muslims protested against the alleged objectionable scenes about the Prophet Muhammad. More news stories about these protests in 2012 can be found here, here, & here.
To sum up, a video of a protest in London against the film ‘Innocence of Muslims,’ held in 2012, is being falsely shared, claiming that Muslims in England recently protested demanding that England be declared an Islamic state.