| schema:text
| - Fact Check: No, this man DIDN'T die smiling to protect Al Aqsa Mosque, picture is from staged funeral
Viral photo peddled with claims about a supposed martyr is from a funeral management program held for students in Malaysia back in 2012.
Listen to Story
India Today Fact Check
This photo is from a 2014 activity about funeral management held as part of the college orientation program at Kolej Poly-Tech Mara, Kuala Lumpur.
A photo of a man wrapped in white cloth is making the rounds on social media platforms. Calling the man a “martyr”, those sharing the photo claimed that it shows a man who died smiling while protecting the Al-Aqsa Mosque from blasts and attacks.
A Facebook user while sharing the photo wrote, “This brother died while protecting Masjid Al-Aqsa Mosque from blast and attacks, Muslims honoured him as a martyr, look the smile at his face.” The archived version of this post can be found here.
India Today, in its investigation, found that this photo does not show a shrouded martyr. It is from a 2014 college orientation program about funeral management.
AFWA Probe
Reverse searching the viral photo on Yandex led us to a blog post carrying the viral photo. This post from October 2014 was titled “Activities in KPTM”.
Kolej Poly-Tech MARA (KPTM) is a private higher institution established in September 2003 that has 7 branches including one of the University level in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
The blog post was written by a person who attended Rehlah Al-Khulud — a program that taught funeral management to the students at KPTM, Kuala Lumpur. According to it, the event aimed to give awareness about funeral management techniques like bathing the body, preparing Kafan and performing funeral prayer correctly.
The post carried photos of boys watching the preparation of the Kafan for the boy whose photo is now going viral. He can be seen lying on the sheet with different facial expressions in different photos — suggesting that this was just a college activity and not the funeral of a martyr.
Using keywords, we then found a Facebook post from October 2014. This post was shared on a page called KPTM part-time jobs and volunteering activities. According to it, Rehlah Al-Khulud was going to be held on October 11, 2014, at Kolej Poly-Tech Mara, Kuala Lumpur. It carried photos of a similar funeral preparation.
We also found the same photo posted on Facebook by a person named Haris Sebiey on October 11, 2014, mentioning the location as KPTM, Kuala Lumpur. This person could also be seen in one of the photos present in the blog post above. We have reached out to Sebiey. If and when he replies, this article will be updated.
We found another blog post from October 2014 written by a different attendee — this time with photos of Kafan preparation for a woman. According to it, the activity was a part of the two-day orientation program held for the new intakes at KPTM.
Please share it on our at 73 7000 7000
You can also send us an email at factcheck@intoday.com
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)