Users of social networking sites shared what their publishers said was a picture of UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed laying the foundation stone for a Hindu temple in Abu Dhabi, after condemnations of statements deemed offensive to the Prophet Muhammad made by a senior official in India’s ruling party.
However, the image is a composite, and the original one is not recent, and in fact shows an Emirati minister laying the foundation stone for the first Hindu temple in Abu Dhabi in 2019.
The picture shows people wearing traditional Gulf clothes and others similar to those worn by Buddhist or Hindu monks.
And he wrote on the photo, “Bin Zayed inaugurates the second largest Hindu temple in the world in Abu Dhabi.” The accompanying comment stated, “The Hindus insult the Messenger of Islam and Ibn Zayed opens a temple for them.”
This image spreads after the condemnations of statements deemed offensive to the Prophet Muhammad made by a senior official in the ruling party in India.
Several Arab countries condemned these statements, including the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait, where a large food store removed Indian goods from its shelves.
However, the circulated image is old and complex and has nothing to do with all that.
The research indicated that the original version of it was published on several Emirati websites in 2019, and it does not show the President of the UAE, Mohammed bin Zayed, but the Emirati Minister Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi, who was the Minister of Climate Change and Environment at the time.
This photo was taken during the laying of the foundation stone for the first Hindu temple in the UAE in April of the year 2019 in Abu Dhabi.
The minister can be seen clearly in a video published by the official Emirates News Agency, in which Mohammed bin Zayed does not appear.
The UAE is proud that it is a place of tolerance between different religions, allows the practice of different religious rites, and is home to about 3.4 million Indian expatriates, according to “AFP”.
It seems that the picture was first published as a joke, especially as it bears the slogan of the satirical “Virus” page, and then re-circulated as real.