A video is being shared on social media claiming it is the visuals of a woman being forcefully converted to Islam. Sharing the video, the post states that ‘The Kerala Story’ movie depicts the true incidents of love jihad and forceful Islamic conversions happening in the country. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: Video of a non-Muslim woman being forcefully converted to Islam
Fact: The video shared in the post shows old visuals of a peer or Muslim priest performing exorcism on a Muslim woman in Bangladesh. The video does not show the forceful Islamic conversion and it has nothing to do with India. Hence, the claim made in the post is False.
On reverse image search of the screenshots of the video shared in the post, screengrabs from the video were found in a BlogSpot article published in June 2021. This article shared the screengrabs reporting that a video showing exorcism in Bangladesh was misinterpreted on social media as the visuals of forceful Islamic conversions. On searching for further details using these keywords on the internet, an extended version of the video was found published by many YouTube users in 2019. They can be seen here, here, and here.
In 2019, when a user tweeted the same video mentioning it is the visuals of a Hindu woman being forcefully converted to Islam in Bangladesh, a user in response to the tweet said, “I speak Bengali. It is my native language. The video is an exorcism video.” Sharing a YouTube link to the extended version of the video, the user tweeted, “The woman is Muslim and supposedly attacked by a Hindu Jinn. Though the entire event is outrageous, this is not a case of forced conversion.”
Bangladesh-based fact-checking site ‘Rumor Scanner’ published a fact-check article related to the viral video in January 2022. This news site confirmed it is the video of a peer or Muslim priest performing an exorcism on a Muslim woman in Bangladesh. The peer thought the possessor inside the woman was a non-Muslim, and to convert the jinn to Islam, the Muslim priest taught Kalima to the so-called Jinn in the possessed woman and took a statement of being converted to Islam inside from her.
To sum it up, an exorcism video from Bangladesh is shared as the visuals of a non-Muslim woman being forcefully converted to Islam.
