What was claimed
A video shows a mosque being demolished in China.
Our verdict
The footage actually shows a building being knocked down in a theme park in Indonesia.
Video does not show mosque being torn down in China
A video of a digger demolishing a structure that resembles a religious building has been shared on social media with implied claims it shows a mosque being torn down in China.
But the footage actually shows a building being knocked down in a theme park in Indonesia.
One post on Facebook is captioned: “China tearing down mosques as Islam is now considered a mental illness.” It includes a video with overlaid text saying: “WOW China is not messing about, What’s this about????”
Using the TikTok handle in the video’s watermark, Full Fact traced the footage back to a video posted on 10 March 2025 captioned “China’s ripping mosques down why?”
But the video was not filmed in China. The building in the footage has the same colour and shape as a building shown in footage shared on YouTube of a demolition at the Hibisc Fantasy Puncak amusement park in Indonesia.
Indonesian news outlets reported that the theme park was ordered to be demolished by the local government on 6 March 2025 due to environmental violations and concerns about flooding.
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China and Islam
It is true that the Chinese government has been accused of closing mosques. A 2023 Human Rights Watch report said authorities in China had closed, destroyed and repurposed mosques in the Ningxia and Gansu provinces in the northwest of the country.
The UN said in 2022 that Beijing may have committed crimes against humanity in Xinjiang, which is home to a large community of Muslim Uyghurs.
China denies this. The Chinese foreign ministry described the UN’s report as “completely illegal and void” and told Reuters “Muslims enjoy enough religious sites, and the government has funded the repair and maintenance of mosques.”
It’s important to consider whether something shows what it claims to before sharing it. You can read more about this in our guides on how to fact check misleading images and videos.
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 missing context because the video shows a building being knocked down in a theme park in Indonesia, not a mosque being demolished in China.