An old video showing a man offering namaz on top of a car in New York City is being misattributed to London
Social media is abuzz with a video (here, here, and here) of a man performing namaz on the top of a car. It is being claimed that this incident happened in London. We will fact-check this claim through this article.
Claim: Video of a man offering namaz on top of a car in London.
Fact: This video was filmed in New York City, US, not in London. It has been available on the internet since at least 2010. Hence, the claim made in the post is Misleading.
To check the veracity of the viral claim, we performed a reverse image search using a few keyframes from the viral video. This search led us to old YouTube posts containing the same video (here, here, and here). The oldest among these was uploaded( archive link) on 20 December 2010, with a title that reads ‘Cab Driver worships on trunk of his cab on Broadway NYC.’
The description section of this video says, ‘… definitely something you do not see every day on Broadway….’ Broadway is a street located in New York City, US. Another video uploaded in November 2012 also said that this video was filmed in New York. To verify this, we performed a keyword search on the internet but did not find any news reports related to this incident, except for a few web articles (here and here) that contained visuals from this video.
However, a few key findings from the video indicated that this video was filmed in New York and not in London, UK.
Firstly, through a keyword search on the internet, we did not find any news reports linking this video to London, UK. After carefully observing the video, we discovered it was filmed in front of a Lens Crafters Optique store, a prescription eyewear store.
Then, through a keyword search on Google Maps and the store locator option on the LensCrafters website (here and here), we learned that LensCrafters does not have a store in the UK. Also, we performed an additional keyword search on the internet to check if they discontinued their services in the UK (to see if they operated in the past and discontinued now) and found no news reports confirming the same.
Next, the video shows a NYC Taxi yellow taxi with a medallion number ‘3M93.’ This is the format of the medallion numbers printed on the taxis in New York, as mentioned on the official website of the city of New York.
Apart from this, we can also see the NYC taxi logo (here and here) on the car, where the man is seen offering the prayer. You can find this logo on many photos of such taxis posted on stock image websites (here, here, here, here, and here)
Furthermore, at around 12 seconds into the video, we see part of the signboard that contains the letters ‘dway.’ This also suggests it may have been filmed on Broadway Street in New York.
Additionally, on the back of the taxi in the video, we can see the Dail 311 phone number. This number provides access to non-emergency information and services from the local government (here, here, and here).
To sum up, an old video of a man offering namaz atop a car, filmed in New York City, is being attributed to London.