Social media users have been sharing a screenshot of an alleged tweet that appeals to the Muslim community to sell poor quality food and beverages laced with chemicals to Hindus to make them sick. The last line states that the fatwa has been issued by ‘Madrasa Darul Uloom Deoband’. Facebook page ‘हिन्दू राष्ट्र संघ’ (Hindu Rashtra Sangh) posted this screenshot on March 4, where it was shared by over 800 users at the time of writing.
Several Facebook users also shared the viral screenshot.
Deceptive post from a fake account
We looked for this handle on Twitter and found that it had been deleted. However, using web.archive.org, we found archived versions of dozens of tweets posted by the account. We noticed that there were a lot of grammatical errors in the post being circulated, indicating that it may be fake. There are also a lot of errors in the bio as seen in an archived link below.
Alt News reached out to Ashraf Usmani, the media in-charge of the madrasa, and inquired about this viral claim. “This fake post has gone viral several times in the past. I have clarified that it is not true on many occasions. We have not issued any such order”, he said.
Examining the archive further, we discovered that before operating under the username @gayur_sheikh, the username of the handle used to be @sekh_gayor.
In one tweet, another user called it a fake account and accused the individual behind it of trying to incite a riot. It is noteworthy that the tweets made from this fake handle ‘Maulana Gayur Sheikh’ date back to the anti-CAA-NRC protests.
Therefore, social media users shared a fake fatwa attributed to Darul Uloom Deoband. The Twitter handle which posted the original screenshot of the message has now been deleted.
