Claim: A video shows Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque during Friday prayer.
Fact: The video actually shows the holy day of Ashura at the shrine of Imam Hussain in Karbala, Iraq.
On 10 January 2025, a post (archive) on Facebook shared a 30-second clip of a large number of people entering what appeared to be a mosque. According to the post’s caption, the video depicted the scene at Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque during Friday prayers. The caption reads as follows in Urdu:
مسجد اقصیٰ میں نماز جمعہ کے منظر
معذرت کے ساتھ کوئی ماشاءاللہ کہنے والا نہیں ملا
This reads as follows in English:
Scenes of Friday prayers in Al-Aqsa Mosque
Unfortunately, no one said Mashallah
Fact or Fiction?
To see if this video in fact showed al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, Soch Fact Check conducted a reverse-image search of its keyframes.
The earliest instance of the video that we found was from four years ago on a Persian website. However, we were not able to ascertain the exact date the video was posted due to technical limitations with the website.
Part of the longer video, the clip of people allegedly flooding al-Aqsa mosque appears between 1:53–1:57. The video’s title, in Persian, translates to: “A strange and unbelievable miracle from Corona in Karbala”.
The Instagram handle “seydahmad” can be seen when the video being fact-checked is shown. Searching for this on Instagram led us to an account where we found a video, dated 28 September 2020, which included the clip in the claim. An embedded caption in Persian also appears with the clip, the last three lines of which read as follows in Persian:
(۱۳۹۹) عاشورای امسال
درب باب الرجاء
حرم امام حسین علیہ سلام
According to Translate.com, this reads as follows in English:
(2020) Ashura This Year
The Door of Hope
Shrine of Imam al-Husayn (a.s.)
The year ۱۳۹۹ is from the Persian calender. The date of the Instagram post, 28 September 2020, corresponds to the seventh day of the month of Mehr in the year ۱۳۹۹ in the Persian calendar.
Moreover, ‘The Door of Hope’ or ‘the gate of hope (درب باب الرجاء)’, referred to in the Instagram caption, is one of the doors leading to the shrine of Imam Hussain, which is in Karbala, Iraq.
The results of the reverse image search also led us to a fact-check on the video in the claim, published by Fact Crescendo. According to this fact-check too, the video, uploaded in 2020, shows the “celebration of Ashura” in Karbala, Iraq. However, this fact-check claims that the clip shows a mosque adjacent to the shrine of Imam Hussain and not ‘The Door of Hope’.
Below, a comparison of a keyframe of the clip fact-checked by Fact Crescendo (left) and a picture of ‘The Door of Hope’ from Getty Images (right) is shown:
There are a number of similarities between the two entrances shown above: the star-shaped patterns above the arch, the two horizontal cement strips running parallel below, and the circular design on the tiles of the right wall.
However, the triangular section between the two pillars is different in both images: it is filled in the video shared by Fact Crescendo, but appears hollow in the image of ‘The Door of Hope’ from Getty Images.
While it seems that the clip in the video most likely shows ‘The Door of Hope’ that leads to Imam Hussain’s shrine, Soch Fact Check could not ascertain the fact. However, we can confirm that the video shows the commemoration of Ashura at a location likely near the shrine of Imam Hussain in Karbala, Iraq.
Virality
On Facebook, the claim was shared here, here, here, here, here, and here.
On Instagram, the claim was shared here, here, and here.
On YouTube, the claim was shared here, here, here, and here.
On Threads, the claim was shared here.
Conclusion: The video in the claim does not show scenes from Friday prayers at Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque. It actually shows people congregating for Ashura at a location, likely near the shrine of Imam Hussain in Karbala, Iraq.
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Background image in cover photo: ABC News
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