Not a Poster, That's an Edited Image from 2015 Iranian Film 'Muhammed'

The edited photo is being shared in the backdrop of the Nupur Sharma controversy.

In the backdrop of the Nupur Sharma-Prophet Muhammad row, a photo of a film poster which shows a man prostrating over a child, with the title as 'Muhammed', is being shared on social media, claiming that it shows the poster of a new film based on the life of the Prophet.

Some users have shared the image showing support to Nupur Sharma and stating that the Prophet was a married to a much younger Aisha, repeating the claims about her age.

However, we found that the image is edited. The original poster shows an image of the universe. And, the other picture was taken by a photographer Omar Shekoo in 2019. It showed Eid prayers at the Al-Tawheed mosque in Cairo, Egypt.

CLAIM

The photo is being shared along with the claim in Hindi, "जब ट्रेलर ऐसा है तो फिल्म कैसी होगी?"

(Translation: When this is the trailer, what will the film be?)

More archived links can be seen here, here, here, here, here, and here.

WHAT WE FOUND

We first looked for the official poster of the film 'Muhammed' that is directed by Majid Majidi. The film was released in 2015, and it was released worldwide in 2017.

We found the original image of the poster of the film on IMDb, a website that keeps data for all things entertainment, which includes ratings, reviews, cast, crew as well as posters.

The poster is clearly different from the viral image.

Next, we looked for news reports and found that the film's release in 2015 was met with protests. In India, a fatwa was issued against the Iranian film-maker Majidi and Oscar-winning Indian composer AR Rahman over the depiction of the Prophet in the film.

Further, we cropped the image of the man and the child and ran a reverse image search on them. This led us to a tweet (archive) from 2019, where the man and the child can be seen.

A further reverse image search led us to the Instagram post by a user named Omar Shekoo dated 5 June 2019.

Omar's bio read that he is a freelance photographer.

The image's caption, originally in Arabic, translated to 'Eid prayers at the Al-Tawheed mosque in Matariya'. We looked for the mosque on Google and found that it is in Cairo, Egypt.

The photographer had also posted other images of the Eid prayers, and in another photo, the child can be seen playfully looking at the camera, while sitting on the lap of the same man.

The photo was posted on 9 June 2019 and the caption read, 'Eid prayers at the Al-Tawheed mosque in Matariya.'

Clearly, a photoshopped image is being shared on social media falsely claiming that it shows the poster of a new film.

(With inputs from SM Hoax Slayer)

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