A video (here and here) showing an Ashura procession on a busy street is going viral on social media, claiming that it was filmed in New York City after Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the mayoral elections on 04 November 2025. Let’s find out the truth behind this video.
Claim: The video shows an Ashura procession in New York City after Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the mayoral election.
Fact: The video is unrelated to Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the New York Mayoral election. It shows an Ashura procession that took place in Houston, Texas, in July 2025, months before the New York mayoral election. No credible reports indicate that such a procession took place in New York after Mamdani’s victory. Hence, the claim is FALSE.
To verify the claim, we conducted a keyword search on Google to understand if any Ashura procession took place in New York after Zohran Mamdani’s victory. However, we found no such reports. Moreover, Ashura in 2025 was observed in July.
To trace the origin of the video, we performed a reverse image search on Google, which led us to the same clip uploaded on an X account and other social media platforms in July 2025 (here, here and here), months before Mamdani’s victory. These posts clearly mentioned that the video shows an Ashura procession in Texas, USA, not New York.
Further search led us to reports confirming that the Ashura procession took place in Houston, Texas, in July 2025.
To confirm the location, we geolocated the area seen in the viral video and identified it as 1000 Louisiana St, Houston, Texas. A side-by-side comparison of a still from the viral video and visuals from Google Maps shows matching buildings and street structures. Notably, the Esperson Buildings, a historic landmark located at 808 Travis St, Houston, Texas, are clearly visible in the background. This confirms that the viral video was filmed in Texas, not New York.
To sum up, an old video of an Ashura procession in Texas is falsely shared as being from New York after Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the mayoral election.
