FactCheck: Did Cristiano Ronaldo convert to Islam during FIFA World Cup in Qatar?

Amidst the FiFa WorldCup in Qatar, an infographic is going viral on social media sites. On which,it is written that, “Now it is understood why so much money was spent on Qatar World Cup. The day before yesterday there was news of 558 people reading Kalma and today famous footballer Cristiano Ronaldo accepted Islam after being impressed by the Islamic attitude of the Qatar government and Zakir Naik’s speech. congratulations.” – English Translation

Fact Check

On keyword search, the DFRAC team found no such official news of Ronaldo converting to Islam. Moreover, in the infographic, there are three different pictures merged together. On reverse image search we found that all three images are old and deceptive.

The first picture where Ronaldo is wearing a white gown and a headscarf can be seen in this tweet from 2014.

The next picture in which Ronaldo is holding a photo frame which Arabic words which mean “there is no God but Allah” is photoshopped.

Further, the DFRAC team found the third picture in an article published in 2013 on the website of voa-islam. It was mentioned that “Real Madrid megastar Cristiano Ronaldo recently got a surprise gift from Mobily, the Saudi Arabian mobile operator company.”

Conclusion

Hence, it can be seen that all the three pictures of the infographic are deceptive and not related to the ongoing FIFA World in Qatar. Therefore, the viral infographic is fake.

DFRAC Editor

Digital Forensics, Research and Analytics Centre (DFRAC) is a non-partisan and independent media organisation which focuses on fact-checking and identifying hate speech. With the popularisation of the internet came the challenge of information overload and often times, our feeds are overpopulated with conflicting, incendiary and false information which is increasingly becoming difficult to ignore and not believe in

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