The claim that John Ford, the richest man in America had converted to Islam is false - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
January 4, 2022
A post is being widely shared on social media claiming that John Ford, the richest man in America had converted to Islam. Along with the post, a photo of a man in a suit is also being shared. Let us fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Richest Man in America, John Ford, converted to Islam.
Fact: The photo of the person is rumoured to be of a US Army leader who was saying the Shahada (prayer of initiation into the faith) in a video that had gone viral in 2018 in Oman. The name of the person could not be identified. There is no person named ‘John Ford’ in ‘The 10 Richest People in America From 2010-2021’ list given by Forbes. There are no recent news articles which say that the richest man in America, John Ford had converted to Islam. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
When reverse image search is done on the photo in the post, an article with a similar image was found. According to the article published on 23 March 2018, the person in the image is rumoured to be a US Army leader who was saying the Shahada (prayer of initiation into the faith) in a video that had gone viral then. A video is also attached with the article where a group of people can be seen sitting next to the person reciting something. There is no mention of any John Ford in the article.
Upon searching on google for the person named ‘John Ford’, he was an eminent Director/ Producer in Hollywood who passed away in 1973. There is also a LinkedIn profile of a person named ‘John Ford’ who worked in the media industry. But none of the pictures of these two people match with the photo of the person mentioned in the post. Further, there was no person named ‘John Ford’ in ‘The 10 Richest People In America From 2010-2021’ list by Forbes.
To sum it up, the claim that John Ford, the richest man in America had converted to Islam is false.