A video showing people trying to record the Islamic call to prayer - Azaan - has gone viral with a claim that the sound was coming from the sky.
However, we found that the video showed people capturing a video of the Azaan being played from a nearby mosque in Germany's Berlin. According to news reports, the muslim call to prayer was broadcast at the same time when a nearby church rang its bells to show solidarity amid the COVID-19 pandemic in April 2020.
CLAIM
Those who shared the viral video said, "Aasman se azaan huyi
जर्मनी के बर्लिन शहर मे आसमान से आवाज़ सुनाई देने लगीं। खुदा की कुदरत वहां के मुस्लिम और अग्रेज लोग इस गेबी अजान की आवाज और वहां के नजारे का विडीयों रेकोर्ड करते हुये आप देख सकतें हे। अल्लाहु अकबर,अल्लाहु अकबर, माशाअल्लाह,माशाअल्लाह |"
[Translation: Sounds were heard from the sky in the city of Berlin, Germany. You can see the magic of God that the Muslims and foreigners started recording the sound of this Azaan and the scenes around there. Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Masha'Allah, Masha'Allah.]
An archive of the post can be found here.
(Source: Facebook/Screenshot)
WHAT WE FOUND OUT
Using the InVID WeVerify Google Chrome extension, we extracted some keyframes from the viral video and conducted a keyword search on some of them. While going through the results on Google, we found the video posted on a Turkish language website.
The article was posted on 3 April 2020 and was titled, "In Germany and the Netherlands, the call to prayer was heard". We also found other social media posts from April 2020.
Taking a cue from that, we conducted a keyword search for "Azaan in Berlin" and found a video report on YouTube by Russian news organisation called Ruptly.
The video was titled, “Germany: Mosque's call to prayer ends early after physical distancing breaches.”
The first paragraph in the destription reads: “An estimated 300 people gathered outside the Dar Assalam Mosque in Berlin on Friday where they listened to a call to prayer that was held in conjunction with bell-ringing at a nearby church, in a sign of solidarity during the COVID-19 crisis.”
At the beginning of the video, we see a person singing, making it evident that the sound was not coming from the sky.
We looked up Dar Assalam Mosque and found photographs of it on Google maps. A street view from 2008 shows similar structures but have been painted differently since then.
Comparison between the original image from Google and viral video.
(Photo: Altered by The Quint)
We found the same video was viral with similar claims earlier in 2020 in other languages and was fact-checked by AFP.
Evidently, a video showing the azaan being broadcasted from a mosque during the COVID-19 pandemic was shared with a false claim that the sound was coming from the sky.
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