An old video showing an Islamic procession in London is viral online with the false claim that it shows Muslims celebrating the re-election of Sadiq Khan as the mayor of the city.
BOOM found that the claims are false, the video shows a procession carried out in 2021 on the occasion of Ashura, or the 10th day of Muharram, where Shia Muslims commemorate the martyrdom of Prophet Mohammed's grandson.
Sadiq Khan was re-elected for a third term as the Mayor of London on May 4, 2024, becoming the first mayor of the city to achieve this historic feat. A former human rights attorney, Khan began his political career in 2005 and first became the Mayor of London in 2016.
The video shows Muslim women in burqas marching on London's Oxford Street with banners and flags.
A right-wing page on Instagram, @the_nation_vibes, shared the video with the caption, "They all voted for Sadiq Khan. That’s how he won for 3rd time and he will keep winning more times. He won’t go until entire London looks like this."
Click here to view the post and here for an archive.
Another user on Facebook wrote, "This is a procession in the heart of London lead by all burka clad women to celebrate the Victory of most communal politician Janab Sadiq Khan ( descendent of Babar) as Mayor. Please remember was no such celebration by any community after Rishi Sunak's elevation as PM of United Kingdom. World is watching all these."
Click here to view the post and here for an archive.
FACT CHECK
BOOM found that the video is from 2021 and shows a procession on the 10th day of Muharram, it is unrelated to Khan's recent appointment as Mayor of London.
BOOM had previously debunked this claim in December 2023 when it was falsely linked to the Israel-Hamas war.
We looked at the viral video closely and found that one of the women was carrying a placard that read, "The legacy of Hussain lives on."
Hussain refers to Imam Husayn ibn Ali, the grandson of Phophet Muhammad, whose martyrdom is commemorated on the day of Ashura, or the 10th day of Muharram.
In 2023, we had also found a clarification by MSNBC journalist Mehdi Hasan under one of the viral videos. According to Hasan, the video was from 2021 and showed a religious procession by the Shia community on Ashura. Hasan also mentioned that the procession was held for Imam Husayn.
Taking a clue from this, we ran a search for Ashura day 2021 in London using Arabic keywords and found a video shared on August 20, 2021 with visuals matching the viral video. The video was titled 'Ashura March, London, Oxford Street'. See here.
Another video by YouTube channel Box Room shared on August 20, 2021, carried visuals of the banners on Oxford Street as well as the red bus seen in the viral video.
Another Youtube channel, Al Hussaini TV, shared the video of the 2021 procession on August 27.
The video also carried the name of the organisers of the march, The Hussaini Foundation, which led us to their Instagram page. Here, we found a post from August 16, 2021, detailing a map of the procession's route, beginning from Hyde Park and ending at Downing Street.
Other posts by the handle specified that the march was set to take place on August 19, 2021. The page also shared several photos from the procession, some of which matched the visuals in the viral video.
A street view of Oxford Street from 2021 on Google Maps also confirmed that the banners seen in the viral video were from that time.
Click here to view.
Finally, we found that when the video was circulating with false claims in December 2023, the London Metropolitan Police's official handle had issued a clarification and stated that the video was from Ashura day in August 2021.