Claim: A video shows Pakistan’s former prime minister Imran Khan reciting tasbeeh on his fingers in an operation theatre after he was attacked during an anti-government rally in Wazirabad.
Fact: The video does not show Imran Khan. It is, in fact, an old video from 2021.
Fact or Fiction?
On 4 November 2022, the Facebook page All About PTI shared a video claiming that Imran Khan was reciting tasbeeh during an operation following an attack on him in Wazirabad city in Punjab province.
Soch Fact Check found the claim to be false. A keyword search “Man pray Allah surgery” on YouTube led us to a video posted on 23 October 2021 by Islam is Peaceful. The video is titled, “A man having surgery and reciting the names of Allah. SubhanAllah #islamispeaceful #islamispeace .”
To further investigate the claim, Soch Fact Check searched key frames with Google Lens, which revealed that a Facebook user posted the video as early as 7 December 2021.
Virality:
Soch Fact Check conducted a CrowdTangle analysis for the seven-day period leading up to 10 November 2022, using the following search term:
“جو شخص ایمان کا اتنا مضبوط ہو کہ آپریشن کے وقت بیہوشی کے وقت اللہ پاک کے ذکر میں مشغول ہو اسے کون گرا سکتا ہے۔ [Who can bring down a person who has such strong faith that he is remembering Allah in an unconscious state during his operation
The search term turned up 14,848 interactions across 255 posts on Facebook. The analysis revealed that this post is performing 32.57x better than other similar posts, with 1,600 likes and 1,200 shares. The oldest post dates back to 4 November 2022.
Gul Zafar Khan’s post received 925 likes, 291 shares and 17,000 views.
On Facebook, the claim was shared here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.
The viral video was also posted here, here, here, here, here and here on Twitter.
On TikTok, it can be found here and here.
The clip is also available on YouTube, here, here and here.
Conclusion: The video does not show Imran Khan praying during his surgery. It is an old video from 2021.