New Delhi: A short clip with the claim that in Australia “parents go furious as a video of children in Australia being taught how to pray in a mosque goes viral. Furious parents accuse the school of brainwashing and ‘Islamizing’ their children in the name of pleasing a migrant community”.
The claim was shared by many social media users with more than 20K followers including Supreme Court lawyer Shashank Shekhar Jha, he claimed “Australia: Schools going students are made to do Namaz without permission from their parents.” (who deleted his tweet after being called out; web archive of his post here), MeghUpdates an infamous account for sharing fake news in the past, Minni Razdan, Rakesh Krishnan Simha who is a New Zealand based journalist and writes on defence and foreign affairs for Russia Beyond the Headlines and Paul B with 11.7K followers.
You can find the archive links here, here, here and here.
Fact Check/Verification
A logo was visible in every shared video of the said claim.
We simply searched SBS on Google and came across this website which matches the logo seen in the video clip. Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) is a multicultural and multilingual broadcaster which includes news, sports, documentary, film, entertainment, food, radio and television.
On thoroughly digging in all pages of SBS on Twitter we came across this post dated February 15, 2023. On reading the article shared in the post we concluded that the 1:08 minutes clip shared was taken from the trailer of the SBS series “THE SWAP”. You can watch the trailer here. In the trailer also, the narrator says “THE SCHOOL SWAP THAT BRINGS TOGETHER 12 STUDENTS AND FAMILIES..”
THE SWAP is a three part documentary series of a social experiment where twelve STUDENTS AND FAMILIES from very different cultures, religions and backgrounds are “thrown into each other’s worlds”. The architect of this social experiment is Ali Kadri, CEO of Islamic College of Brisbane, who can also be seen in the viral clip.
The description about series in the article shared by SBS official page on Twitter states “Taking part are six Muslim families, four Catholic families and two atheist families. Over one school term, Kadri accompanies the students on an emotional rollercoaster as they experience the anxiety, excitement and wonder of spending time at each other’s schools and with each other’s families and communities”
Thus, the claims that Islamic prayers were forced, parents were unaware and accused schools of brainwashing their kids is COMPLETELY FALSE.
| Claimed By | Social Media Users |
| Claimed Reviewed By | The Searchlight |
| Claim Source | |
| Claim Fact Check | False |
