Fact-Check: Old Video of Ashura Procession Falsely Linked to Israel-Hamas War

The clip has been on the internet since 2021 and shows an Ashura procession. It has no links to the Israel-Hamas war

Fact-Check: This is an old video from London and is unrelated to the Israel-Hamas war.  

(Photo: The Quint)

A video showing a procession of burqa-clad women walking down a street in London, UK has gone viral on social media, where it is being shared as a recent clip.

The claim: Some users sharing the video claim that it shows a recent incident, while others are linking it to the Israel-Hamas war, claiming that it shows a pro-Palestinian march which takes place every Saturday in the city.

• The video was also shared by Belgian MP Darya Safai on her X (formerly Twitter) account.

An archive of this post can be seen here.

(Source: X/Screenshot)

At the time of writing this article, Safai's post had gathered over 49 lakh views.

(Archives of more posts on social media can be seen here and here.)

Is it true?: Neither is the video recent, nor does it have any connection to the Israel-Hamas war.

• The video has been on the internet since at least September 2021.

• It shows Muslims in London carrying out a march to mark Ashura, a day of mourning which takes place 10 days after Muharram.

How did we find out?: We carefully observed the video and noticed blue banners reading 'Oxford Street District', which were strung up with red, yellow, and other blue banners.

The video shows multicoloured pennants hanging above London's Oxford Street.

(Source: X/Altered by The Quint)

In another part of the video, we saw that one of the women in the procession was carrying a placard with the words 'The Legacy of Hussain Lives On'.

Procession-goers were carrying placards and flags.

(Source: X/Altered by The Quint)

• Next, we divided this video into multiple keyframes using InVID WeVerify, a video verification extension on Google Chrome.

• Running a reverse image search on some frames returned a result with a Facebook post, which shared the same video on 17 September 2021.

The video was shared in September 2021.

(Source: Facebook/Altered by The Quint)

This post was shared with text mentioning that it showed an Ashura procession in London in 2021.

Taking a cue from this, we used relevant keywords to look for more visuals of the procession.

• The search led us to a YouTube video of the Ashura procession, which was published in August 2021.

• In its description, the video mentioned that the procession had travelled through several localities in London, before ending at 10 Downing Street.

• We noticed some similarities between this video and the viral video.

We noticed similar yellow and white scaffolding on a building in both videos.

(Source: X/YouTube/Altered by The Quint)

The pennants for Oxford Street District were the same in both videos.

(Source: X/YouTube/Altered by The Quint)

Using relevant keywords, we were able to confirm that the Oxford Street pennants seen in the viral video were indeed put up in 2021, as seen in this photo on stock image website Alamy.

The banners and pennants were put up along London's Oxford Street in 2021.

(Source: Alamy/Screenshot)

Police, journalists clarify: Taking note of the video being circulated, London's Metropolitan Police responded to a now-deleted post, clarifying that the video was not recent.

"We believe it was actually filmed at an Ashura Day event in 2021," their post stated.

The Metropolitan Police stated that the video was old.

(Source: X/Screenshot)

NBC journalist Mehdi Hasan too, stated that the video showed a "Shia religious procession for Imam Husayn on Ashura Day in 2021."

What is Ashura?: In Islam, Ashura is observed on the 10th day after Muharram, as a day of mourning.

• Shia Muslims believe that Imam Hussein Ali, the grandson of Prophet Muhammed, was martyred in the Battle of Karbala on this day.

• To mourn for his demise, the prophet is believed to have observed a fast, which is what Shia Muslims also practise on Ashura.

• For Sunni Muslims, Ashura marks the day when Prophet Moses and his followers crossed the Red Sea to escape the Pharoah's cruelty.

• This sect also observed a fast to thank Allah for helping them while also performing acts of kindness and charity.

Pro-Palestine protests in London: For eight consecutive weekends, people supporting the Palestinian side took to the streets of London every Saturday, demanding a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war.

• The latest round of protests on 2 December saw smaller, scattered marches in 13 boroughs of London compared to previous protests which saw hundreds of thousands of people marching in central London, reported The Guardian.

• Two people were arrested during these protests in Brixton, south London, as per Sky News.

• One man was detained "on suspicion of a racially aggravated public order offence," the report read, while the other, a male teenager, was arrested on suspicion of criminal damage to a police vehicle.

Conclusion: An old video showing an Ashura procession in London is being falsely linked to the Israel-Hamas war.

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