Daral Uloom didn’t issue fatwa to lace food served to Hindus with chemicals, fake tweet viral

Social media users have been sharing a screenshot of an alleged tweet by “@gayur_sheikh” that appeals to the Muslim community to sell poor quality food and beverages laced with chemicals to Hindus to make them sick. The last sentence alleges this is a fatwa issued by ‘Madrasa Darul Uloom Deoband’.

The purported screenshot is widely circulating on Facebook. It also carries the following message for the Hindu community – “सभी हिन्दुभाइओ से अपील है, कीसी मुस्लिमसे कोई भी चीज न खरीदे, अपने बच्चोको भी सावधान करें.” This translates to – “It is an appeal to all Hindus to not buy things from Muslims. Warn your children as well.”

The same post was also shared last year by Facebook page ‘हिन्दू राष्ट्र संघ’ (Hindu Rashtra Sangh), where it garnered over 800 shares.

Several Facebook users shared the viral screenshot in 2021.

Deceptive post from a fake account

We looked for @gayur_sheikh on Twitter and found that the handle no longer exists. However, using web.archive.org, we found archived versions of dozens of tweets posted by this account. We also found the viral tweet but noticed that it carried a lot of grammatical errors, indicating that it may be fake. There were also a lot of errors in the bio of the account as seen in an archived link below.

Alt News reached out to Ashraf Usmani, the media in-charge of Darul Uloom Deoband, 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 other archived tweets of @gayur_sheikh, we discovered that its earlier username was @sekh_gayor.

In one of the tweets, a user called the account “fake” and accused its owner of trying to incite a riot. It is noteworthy that the tweets made from this handle 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 no longer exists.