A video of an Islamic preacher being welcomed by his followers is viral with false claims misidentifying him as Mohammed Asaduzzaman, the newly elected mayor of Brighton, United Kingdom.
BOOM found that the man in the viral video is Sheikh Sufi Muhammad Asghar Aslami, an Islamic preacher of the Aslamiya Foundation, an organisation preaching about Islam and not the newly elected Brighton mayor Mohammed Asaduzzaman.
The video shows a man in an Islamic attire, being welcomed with garlands by followers, as Islamic chants in the background can be heard.
Councillor Mohammed Asaduzzaman from the Labour Party was elected as the mayor of United Kingdom's Brighton and Hove in May 2024. He is the first South-Asian Muslim mayor of Brighton and Hove.
An X user shared the video with the caption, "The new mayor of Islamabad, Pakistan Sorry for the typo, he's the new mayor of Brighton, UK."
Click here to see the post and here for the archive.
The video is also being shared on Facebook with the caption, "The new mayor of Islamabad, Pakistan Sorry for the typo, he's the new mayor of Brighton, UK Hahahaha - I wish Churchill, that obese genocidal pig had lived long enough to see this. The terrorist state of Pakistan that he created to destroy India is now swallowing up the grand old British Empire into an Islamic colony. Karma has a brutal sense of irony."
Click here to see the post and here for the archive.
BOOM also received the video on its WhatsApp tipline number for verification.
Fact Check
We first ran a reverse image search on the keyframes of the viral video and came across a video uploaded by Aslamiya Foundation on their official TikTok account. The TikTok video uploaded on June 11, 2024 features the same visuals as in the viral video.
A comparison of the visuals from the viral video and the one uploaded in TikTok can be seen below.
According to the caption on TikTok, the video is from a Muslim community event in Mosque Centre in Bedford, UK.
Taking a cue from this, we went to the official YouTube channel of Aslamiya Foundation where multiple videos feature the same man seen in the viral. From the YouTube channel we identified the man as Sheikh Khawaja Sufi Muhammad Asghar Aslami. According to the bio on the page Aslamiya Foundation, it promotes Islamic preachings. The organisation is based in Pakistan and United Kingdom.
We also found a video captioned as, "Brother taking bayah with Shaykh | Bedford U.K. June 2024." In the video uploaded on YouTube, Aslami can be seen in the same attire as in the viral video.
A comparison between the two can be seen below.
Furthermore, we looked up the newly elected mayor of Brighton and Hove, Mohammed Asaduzzaman and was able to confirm that he is not the same man.
Below is a comparison of the image of the mayor Mohammed Asaduzzaman and Sheikh Khawaja Sufi Muhammad Asghar Aslami.