What was claimed
A video shows Piera Mosque in Barcelona being burnt down.
Our verdict
This clip actually shows a mosque fire in Jakarta, Indonesia, in 2022. However, there was a fire at an unopened mosque in Piera, near Barcelona, the cause of which is being investigated.
A video is being shared on social media with false claims it shows a mosque that has been set on fire in Barcelona, Spain. But the footage actually shows a burning mosque in Indonesia in 2022.
The clip shows flames engulfing the top of a building with a crescent shape visible through the thick smoke. Overlaid text on the clip says: “Spaniards burn Islamist Piera Mosque, Barcelona.” It has been shared across social media platforms including on X, Instagram and Facebook.
One post says: “A newly constructed mosque in Piera, Barcelona, was intentionally set ablaze just days before its inauguration.”
However, this clip does not show recent scenes in Spain. It actually shows the dome of a mosque at the Jakarta Islamic Center ablaze in Indonesia, and the video was shared on TikTok after this happened in October 2022. Other clips showing the dome on fire, and then collapsing, were also shared by media organisations at the time.
The head of the mosque, Muhammad Subki, reportedly said the fire broke out while construction workers were renovating the mosque, and that it was made worse by strong winds. Local police confirmed no one was injured in the fire.
It’s true, however, that there was a fire on 12 July at a new, un-opened mosque in Piera near Barcelona. There were no injuries reported, and the cause is being investigated.
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The versions of the video being shared online with misleading claims include two overlaid photos—one showing a room with square windows and a blue carpet and another of a room with similar square windows destroyed by fire. These photos do show the unopened mosque in Piera before and after the fire.
Miscaptioned clips are a common form of misinformation we see online. It’s important to consider whether videos you see online show what they claim to be before sharing them. Our guides to identifying misleading videos and images offer some useful tips for verifying social media clips yourself.
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 clip shows a mosque on fire in Indonesia in 2022, not recent scenes near Barcelona.
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