Have you seen a photo of such a huge crowd of what headlines are claiming to be 20 million Muslims marching against ISIS?
We found it shared by the Facebook page “OFW, Duterte, Federalism. Heroes United for Freedom.” whose post has been shared over 700 times as of writing.
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Even the First Son Sebastian “Baste” Duterte shared the news on his Facebook page.
According to Facebook search results, the news has been shared hundreds of thousands of times.
Among the most recently dated reports about the said event was published by Alternative News Network on June 10.
However, the report is misleading!
The Muslims did march but it was not really against the ISIS but for a pilgrimage.
Fact-checking site snopes.com said that millions of Shia Muslims did a mass pilgrimage for Arbaeen, a religious holiday held every year, in November 2016 to visit the shrine of Imam Hussein in Karbala, Iraq. The event marks the end of 40 days of mourning of Hussein’s martyrdom.
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Snopes noted how the original article on American Herald Tribute also bore the misleading headline of “Media Blackout as Millions of Muslims March against ISIS and Umayyad Islam in Iraq for Arbaeen Rituals.”
The fact-checking site also noted this description about the pilgrimage and what it really is about, which is not exactly a march against ISIS:
“Millions of Shia Muslims have taken part in one of the biggest marches in the world, as they travel through Iraq in celebration of a famous Muslim martyr.
The marchers made their way to the city of Karbala, 62 miles south west of Baghdad, on Sunday and Monday for the holy day of Arbaeen, which marks the end of a 40-day mourning period following Ashura, the religious ritual that commemorates the death of the Prophet Mohammad’s grandson Imam Hussein in 680 AD.
Large crowds visit the shrines of Imam Hussein and his half-brother Abbas in Karbala, where they were killed in a revolt against the Umayyad ruler Yazeed in the 7th century AD when they refused to pledge allegiance to Yazeed’s Umayyad caliphate.”
As for the accusation that there was a media blackout in covering the event, Snopes said that it is just not true. The pilgrimage is reported by several mainstream news outlets every year. However, some news outlets did note that while the event is a religious one, it seemed to have taken on a political note as the Muslims seem to be defying the attacks often conducted by ISIS in the area.
What’s true is that millions of Muslims did participate in a mass pilgrimage for Arbaeen in November 2016 and it was covered by mainstream media. It was not a gathering of protesters against ISIS that was ignored by the media, although given the attacks that ISIS have conducted against the event, the pilgrimage has also taken on a defiant tone against the terrorists.
Some of the news outlets that have covered the pilgrimage include Independent UK, The Washington Post, and International Business Times.
Buzzfeed News has chastised Facebook Trending for promoting the fake story about the alleged Muslim march against ISIS and the media blackout about the report. It noted that news about Muslims gathering to march against ISIS would have become major news in Iraq, but it is a yearly religious pilgrimage that was not specifically organized to go against the terrorists.
Sources: ( snopes.com , buzzfeed.com )
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