A short clip of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni speaking about Islam being 'incompatible' with Italian culture has gone viral on the internet, where news organisations and social media users have shared it as a recent comment by PM Meloni.
What is the claim?: Those sharing the clip claimed that Meloni made the statement about Islam's incompatibility and the rejection of Sharia in Italy at a recent event organised by her Brothers of Italy party.
Who published it?: Several news organisations, including NDTV World, Business Today, Hindustan Times, News18, Swarajya, LiveMint, Outlook, The Tribune and Firstpost published reports based on the clip.
An archive of this report can be seen here.
(Source: NDTV World/Screenshot)
To view an archived version of this article, click here.
(Source: Business Today/Screenshot)
An archived version of this HT article can be seen here.
(Source: Hindustan Times/Screenshot)
An archived version of this report can be accessed here.
(Source: News18/Screenshot)
To view an archived version of Swarajya's report, click here.
(Source: Swarajya/Screenshot)
Is it true?: No, the video is at least five years old.
We found longer versions of the video, which were shared by verified Italian news organisations in 2018.
How did we find out?: We ran a relevant keyword search to look for the Italian prime minister's statements at the recent event held by her political party, which was attended by UK PM Rishi Sunak and businessman Elon Musk.
As per a report by Financial Times, Meloni discussed Italy's problem caused by "irregular migration," admitting her government's failure to curb it, which was a campaign promise.
She also spoke about Italy's demographic issues, which shows a continuing fall in new births.
However, we did not find any mention of Islam, Sharia, or incompatibility.
About the video: Using InVID, a video verification extension, we divided the viral video into multiple keyframes and ran a reverse image search.
This led us to a video uploaded on a verified YouTube channel called Ala News, an Italian digital media company.
Published on 9 February 2018, a loosely translated version of the title of this video reads, "Meloni: Salvini is right, Islam is incompatible with our culture."
The part of this video, which is being shared as a recent statement, can be seen starting about two minutes into the report.
According to its description, Meloni refers to a statement by another Italian politician, Matteo Salvini, saying that she agrees that "Islam certainly presents incompatibility with our values and civilisation, and what happens in Islamic centres demonstrates this. This does not mean I am generalising, but there is an incompatibility with our culture."
The same video was also shared by Italian news organisation Il Fatto Quotidiano in their 2018 report.
The video dates back to February 2018 and the statement was made before Meloni was elected as prime minister.
(Source: Il Fatto Quotidiano/Altered by The Quint)
Conclusion: A five-year-old video of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is being shared to claim that she made statements about Islam being incompatible with Italian culture at a recent event in Italy.
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