A photo of Aamir Khan with two men is going viral on social media with the false claim that he met Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists when he went for Hajj. However, we found that the claim is fake and that Khan is standing with late Pakistani singer and fashion designer-turned-Islamic preacher Junaid Jamshed and spiritual mentor Tariq Jameel, in a photograph taken in 2012.
CLAIM
We found many people on Twitter sharing this photo on social media with the claim that the Bollywood actor met two terrorists during his trip to Mecca, with the added message that Khan had not tweeted about Sushant Singh Rajput’s death.
We also found that people were sharing this photo with inlaid text which claims that that the two men standing on his side are “Junaid Samshed and Moulana Tariq (Laskhar-e-Toiba terrorists)” and that it was taken during the religious pilgrimage. The post then goes on to say that this is the reality of Khan and that he is talking about intolerance but “tolerated these people's activities.”
People also simply shared the photo raising questions about the people with Khan.
WHAT WE FOUND
On performing a reverse image search, we found the photo in a December 2016 article by Pakistani newspaper The Express Tribune. The article spoke about Khan’s reaction to Jamshed’s death in a plane crash in December of that year. The article also said that Khan had met Jamshed when he went for Hajj with his mother, but did not mention the year.
The viral claims on social media clearly got Jamshed’s name wrong, instead identifying him as Junaid Samshed, as well as misidentifying him as a terrorist. Jamshed was actually a well-known Pakistani figure, a singer and fashion designer-turned-Islamic preacher who began his music career in 1983 and is famous for music albums such as ‘Us Rah Par’. However, he later left his music career behind and started focussing on religious activities.
We also found a video where Jamshed is speaking of his meeting with Aamir Khan at Hajj.
Further, on searching for photos of Khan with Jamshed, we came across the viral photo on Pakistani newspaper Dawn, which carried the photo with the caption “Junaid Jamshed with Bollywood actor Aamir Khan and spiritual mentor Tariq Jameel during the 2012 pilgrimage”.
We also found that Jamshed had uploaded the same photo on his Facebook account in October 2012.
Therefore, this is a photo from 2012, when Khan had gone to Mecca for Hajj with his mother Zeenat Hussain, reported India Today.
Meanwhile, the other man standing next to Khan is Maulana Tariq Jameel, a Pakistani Islamic television preacher, religious writer and scholar. He is also a well-known cleric in Pakistan and is being conferred with a civil award by the government of the country in 2020, a Daily Times report said.
We also found a video of Jameel talking about his meeting with Khan and how Pakistani cricketer Shahid Afridi had arranged it.
Therefore, the claim that Khan met terrorists on his pilgrimage is completely false.
This is not the first piece of fake news about Khan recently. Earlier, on 17 August, Kangana Ranaut took to Twitter to share an interview, purportedly given by Khan, which quotes the actor talking about Islam. In her tweet, Kangana claimed that “Aamir is an extremist and despite his wife being a Hindu, his children would only follow Islam”.
However, we found that the interview on which Kangana has based her tweet is completely fake and baseless and originates from an unreliable website.
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