Fake video of UK teacher telling children to bow and chant ‘Allahu Akbar’ circulates online

A video widely shared across Facebook, Instagram and X claims to show a UK teacher “indoctrinating” children into Islam, by telling them to pray and chant “Allahu Akbar”.

But this video isn’t real and was almost certainly created using artificial intelligence (AI).

The clip mimics CCTV footage of a classroom, with some versions dated 6 November 2025. It shows a woman wearing a headscarf who appears to be a teacher instructing schoolchildren to hold their hands up and repeat after her “Allahu Akbar” (“God is the greatest” in Arabic).

The children, who are kneeling on prayer mats, are then told to bow down with their foreheads to the mat. It is more difficult to hear what they are then asked to repeat, but we think they say “Subhan Rabbi al-A'la” (“Glory to my Lord the Most High” in Arabic).

Social media posts have variously described the footage as “Muslim indoctrination” and “white children being forced into Islam”.

But there are various visual clues that show the video isn’t real and was most likely made using AI.

Dr Siwei Lyu, an expert in digital media forensics at University at Buffalo, State University of New York, told Full Fact that the clip “shows several AI-generated artifacts” such as the background wall decorations and text changing over time, the teacher’s face appearing distorted and the way she appears to sit on an invisible chair.

He added: “The front-row students’ heads stretch unnaturally, and one girl’s twin braids appear and disappear suddenly. These temporal and spatial inconsistencies strongly suggest AI generation.”

Mark Lee, professor of artificial intelligence at the University of Birmingham, also told us that the sudden appearance of a chair is a clue the video was created using AI.

He explained: “Generative AI uses powerful deep neural networks trained on huge amounts of data to generate new images, language and as this case, video. These can be very realistic but due to being trained on past data, there are often the appearance of unrealistic artefacts which we call hallucinations. We can see this with the appearance of a chair mid way through the video.”

Professor Rob Cover, Director of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology’s Digital Ethnography Research Centre, also believes the video is “very likely to have been AI-generated”.

He told Full Fact: “One of the key giveaways is the audio quality. Although purporting to have been captured by a CCTV camera in a classroom, the audio has the metallic sounding voices that are common with low-quality synthetic media.”

He also highlighted the unusual movement in the posters and pictures, as well as inconsistencies of one girl’s hair and the sudden appearance of the chair.

Professor Cover added: “Synthetically-generated rage bait has ranged from high-quality AI productions to those that are grainy and unfocused such as this one.”

Does this happen in schools?

We have previously written about false claims that it is compulsory for all schoolchildren to learn about Islam as a “main study”. As we explained in our fact check, in England, religious education (RE) must be provided in schools, but parents can withdraw children from classes.

For mainstream state-funded schools, the law states that lessons should reflect that the religious traditions of Great Britain are “in the main Christian” while taking account of other religions. The rules for academies and free schools, including faith-based schools, are a little different.

The Department for Education told us there is no national requirement for schools to teach about Islam, though it is likely to be covered in RE lessons as a major world religion.

As AI technology becomes increasingly sophisticated, it is harder to differentiate between real and generated content online. Our blog explains what clues to look out for if you suspect something may have been created with AI.