Claim: A viral video shows President Biden reciting Dua-e-Kumail, which is a special prayer for Shiite Muslims around the world.
Fact: The video is AI-generated; President Biden did not recite the prayer.
On 17 April 2024, a video went viral on several social media platforms, including WhatsApp, showing President Biden reciting Dua-e-Kumail with the captions like:
یرانی میزائلوں میں اتنی پاور کہ بائیڈن دعاء کمیل ورد کرنے لگا
[Translation: Iranian missiles have so much power that Biden started reciting Kumail’s prayer.]
And
“From Lebanese Hezbollah fans. Biden after the Iranian strike”
The video is a blurry close-up of President Biden saying, “Look, I heard this Arabic verse that I like a lot, it’s very beautiful. It’s called Dua Kumail. I read it every Thursday before going to bed.” After this, he continues to recite Arabic verses in an American accent.
The video went viral after Iran launched hundreds of missiles and drones in a direct attack on Israel on 13 April 2024. Due to prior intimation and military intelligence coordination with the US and UK, Israel was able to intercept 300 of them which was the majority of the strikes. This step was taken in the aftermath of the Israeli raid on the Iranian consulate in Syria on 1 April 2024, killing two Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) generals.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check studied the 52-second video and noted that it is extremely low resolution and that Biden’s lip movement is blurred and inconsistent, exhibiting the hallmarks of AI manipulation.
We also looked into major publications, including the BBC, The Guardian, CNN, and Al Jazeera, and did not find any reports claiming that Biden had recited the prayer.
According to Shia Islamic tradition, Ali ibn e Abi Talib, the Prophet’s nephew, advised Kumayl Ibn Ziyad Nakhai to recite this prayer on the evening of every Friday or once a month or at least once every year. A complete translation of the prayer and the English script for the Arabic can be found here.
We found the exact same video of Biden, posted in March, delivering a completely different statement on a Facebook profile called Grim Stone. In this version he can be seen saying, “I just gotta say man, Grim Stone from Edmonton, Canada, man he knows how to get the juices flowing. He, he, he, he, he’s planning a show at the Dive Bar on 27 April with Skrizzly Adams. And I am telling you, you’re nuts. What happens with the parachute anyway? It hasn’t hit, hit, hit, but why is that?”
We also found the source of Biden’s image being manipulated to say various statements. This was a 32-second clip, initially published on YouTube on 17 October 2023, by a channel called 60 Minutes.
Last month, Soch Fact Check published a similar investigation looking into an AI-generated video of Donald Trump endorsing Imran Khan for the General Elections 2024. In this case, we discovered that the video was generated through Parrot AI. The same technology or a similar application could have been used to generate the video of Biden reciting the prayer.
Virality
On WhatsApp, the video was labelled “Forwarded many times”.
On Facebook, we found that the video was shared here, here, here, here, and here.
On X, we found the claim shared here, here, here, here, and here.
On Instagram, we found that the claim was shared here.
Conclusion: The viral clip of Biden reciting Dua-e-Kumail is AI-generated.
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Background image in cover photo: CNN
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