What was claimed
The Guardian has published an opinion piece about Christmas being deeply offensive to Muslims.
Our verdict
This is not a real Guardian article. It was first shared by a satirical account.
Fake Guardian headline about Christmas being ‘offensive’ to Muslims shared online
A screenshot shared on social media appears to show an opinion piece published by the Guardian with the headline: “Christmas is deeply offensive to Muslims, and yet the UK deliberately rubs our noses in it”.
But a spokesperson for the paper told us that this is a fabricated screenshot and no such article has been published by the outlet. We could not find this headline on the Guardian’s website or its social media accounts.
The screenshot was first shared by a parody account that shares spoof headlines in the same format and style as the Guardian, but under the nickname “The Grauniad”. The op-ed was supposedly written by journalist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and has been shared by some social media users who seem to think it's real.
But Ms Alibhai-Brown said in a post on X that “the column claiming Christmas is offensive to Muslims” was “fake” and that she does not write for the Guardian at present. Full Fact has also contacted her for comment.
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We’ve written about other examples of satirical posts from ‘the Grauniad’ shared as if they’re real Guardian articles.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as satire because a Guardian spokesperson said the screenshot is fabricated and that no such article has ever been published by the paper.