Fake Tweet Claims Darul Uloom Issued 'Fatwa' To Lace Food Items With Chemicals

The screenshot has been doing the rounds since 2020 and has been debunked before.

Fact-Check | Darul Uloom didn't issue a fatwa asking Muslims to lace food with harmful chemicals.

(Photo: The Quint)

A screenshot of a tweet going viral on social media claims that a Darul Uloom Madrasa in Uttar Pradesh's Deoband has issued a "fatwa" asking Muslims to sell food items laced with chemicals to make people from the Hindu community sick.

However, we found that the screenshot was posted from a fake account, which has been suspended by Twitter. The screenshot has been viral since at least 2020 and has been debunked before.

CLAIM

The viral tweet, when translated from Hindi to English, said, "All Muslim brothers are informed to mix chemicals and sell poor quality fruits, vegetables, milk, cheese, ice cream etc. in Hindu settlements and villages so that they and their children are gripped by disease in large numbers."

An archive of the post can be found here.

(Source: Facebook/Screenshot)

The post was shared widely on Facebook and other social media platforms in 2020 and 2021. Archives of some of these can be found here and here.

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

When we looked for the profile mentioned in the viral screenshot, we found that the Twitter account didn't exist.

We then looked for archives of the profile using Wayback Machine and found an archive of the original tweet.

A link to the archive can be found here.

(Source: Wayback Machine/Screenshot)

While going through other archives, we found that the account was previously called @sekh_gayor.

An archive of the tweet can be found here.

(Source: Wayback Machine/Screenshot)

We then went through Darul Uloom's website and didn't find any such fatwa.

On looking for news about the claim, we found news articles published in Hindi dailies in March 2020 that said that the institute had filed a complaint regarding the piece of misinformation.

We found that the same claim was previously shared in March 2021 and was debunked by other fact-checking organisations.

Evidently, a tweet from a fake account was shared to claim that the Darul Uloom had issued a communally charged fatwa against people of the Hindu community.

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