A video widely shared on social media showing ‘Muslims in London celebrating the terror attacks on Paris’ has proven to be fake.
The footage, titled Muslims Around The World Celebrate The Islamic Victory In Paris France, claimed to show a large group of Muslim men cheering and waving Pakistani flags outside Tooting Broadway station in south London.
Further, the voice of a newsreader could also be heard, describing the carnage that occurred last Friday in Paris claimed by the Islamic State. The terror attacks left 129 people dead and several more injured.
However, it has now come to light that the video actually shows British Pakistanis celebrating a cricket victory in 2009.
The video which was originally shared from a personal Facebook account on November 14 has since been removed from Facebook and YouTube. It was shared by many far-right blogs and websites and garnered some 458,000 views within hours.
A separate image of a Muslim man standing on a French flag with his fist raised in the air has also been doing the rounds on social media over the past few days. That image has also been declared to be fake as a simple Google search revealed that it was two-years old and had no connection with last week’s Paris attacks.
Muslims all over the world have condemned the attacks in Paris, with many having denounced the terror attacks before the Islamic State released statements in Arabic and French claiming the ‘blessed battle’ was an act of revenge for France’s involvement in the US-led coalition bombing its militants in Iraq and Syria.
The Muslim Council of Britain’s Secretary General, Shuja Shafi, denounced the attacks, saying, “We condemn this violence in the strongest possible terms. My thoughts and prayers for the families of those killed and injured and for the people of France, our neighbours.”
“This attack is being claimed by the group calling themselves ‘Islamic State’. There is nothing Islamic about such people and their actions are evil, and outside the boundaries set by our faith,” he added.
Since the footage was confirmed as fake, many took to Twitter to condemn attempts to make Muslims look bad.
