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| - Fact Check: 2018 photo of Muslim man destroying statue of naked woman is from Algeria, NOT France
India Today found that the incident didn't occur in France but in Algeria, where a man vandalised a statue of a naked woman.
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India Today Fact Check
The incident occurred in Setif, Algeria, in 2018, not France.
A post that has recently been widely shared online features two images — one of a man disfiguring a statue with a chisel and hammer, and the other of the mutilated statue of a naked woman. The statue’s breasts and face appeared completely chiselled out. Allegedly, this act of vandalism took place in France and a Muslim man carried it out because he believed nudity to be a sin in Islam.
A Facebook user sharing the photo, "FRANCE. A man destroys the breasts and face of a female statue of a fountain, considering nudity as 'sin' (haram)." Its archive can be seen here.
India Today Fact Check found that the incident didn’t take place in France but in Algeria, where a man vandalised this statue in 2018.
OUR PROBE
We ran a reverse image search and found several news reports from October 2018 containing the viral photo. A report by The New Arab, dated October 10, 2018, noted that the incident occurred in Algeria. It stated that a man with a hammer attacked and damaged a statue of a bare-breasted woman, an emblem of the eastern city of Setif.
Another report cited Setif communications director Mohamed Touiri, who stated that a Salafi, an ultraconservative Muslim, was responsible for disfiguring the face, breasts, and an arm of the statue.
Reports also stated that in 1997, during a period of peak extremist violence in Algeria, Islamists blew up the statue using dynamite. But it was later repaired in Italy.
Similar reports identifying the place of the incident as Setif in Syria can be seen here and here.
The Ain el-Fouara statue is located in the heart of Setif and serves as the centrepiece of a fountain, roughly 300 kilometres east of the capital Algiers. Created by French sculptor Francis Saint Vidal, the colonial-era statue dates back to 1889 and is a significant landmark in Algeria that draws thousands of visitors daily.
Thus, it is clear that this is an old incident that did not occur in France but in Algeria.
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