Video of a 2015 incident from Belgium showing a Christmas tree being set on fire while “Allahu Akbar” is chanted, shared now as a 2025 incident from the UK

A video (here and here) going viral on social media claims to show a group of people setting fire to a giant Christmas tree while chanting “Allahu Akbar,” alleging that radical Muslims carried out the act in the UK in 2025. Let’s find the truth behind this claim.

The archived post can be found here.

Claim: The viral video shows radical Muslims in the UK setting fire to a giant Christmas tree while chanting “Allahu Akbar” in the year 2025.

Fact The video is from Belgium and dates back to New Year’s Eve 2016, when a group of teenagers set fire to a Christmas tree near the Clemenceau metro station in Anderlecht, Brussels, while chanting “Allahu Akbar.” It has no connection to the UK or any recent incident. Hence the claim is MISLEADING.

To verify the claim, we first checked whether any such incident had occurred in the UK this year, 2025, but found no credible reports supporting it. We then conducted a reverse image search on Google, which led us to the same video uploaded in November 2016. The video was captioned “Muslim Refugees Burn Christmas Tree & shout ‘Allahu Akbar’ in Brussels,” indicating that the footage is from Brussels, not the UK.

Further search led us to news reports identifying the viral video as being from Belgium (here, here and here). According to these reports, on 31 December 2015, a group of teenagers set fire to a Christmas tree using a petrol bomb near the Clemenceau metro station in Anderlecht, Brussels, while shouting “Allahu Akbar.” The incident, which was captured on video, sparked public outrage and raised security concerns in the Belgian capital. Belgian authorities arrested at least one suspect, and the act was widely condemned as vandalism and mob violence.

Additionally, as mentioned earlier, no such incident was reported in the UK. The viral video has no connection to the UK and is old footage from Belgium.

To sum up, a video of a 2015 incident from Belgium showing a Christmas tree being set on fire while “Allahu Akbar” is chanted, shared now as a 2025 incident from the UK.