Fact Check: No, Greta Thunberg was not born into a Muslim family

A screenshot of an article by OpIndia, an Indian right-wing news portal, that purports to claim that Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg was born into a Muslim family and was later adopted has gone viral on social media.

By Newsmeter Network  Published on  7 Feb 2021 8:48 AM GMT
Fact Check: No, Greta Thunberg was not born into a Muslim family

Hyderabad: A screenshot of an article by OpIndia, an Indian right-wing news portal, that purports to claim that Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg was born into a Muslim family and was later adopted has gone viral on social media.

The text in the story reads, "The real face of Great Thunberg. Her real name is Ghazala Bhat she is daughter of Kashmiri Bussinessmen Hilal Bhat who married to Swedish mother Anna Bjorklund converted to Islam became Aafia. Her parents got killed into car accident. She became orphan later adopted by Svante Thunberg [sic]."


Fact Check:

NewsMeter performed a reverse image search and found that the viral image had been morphed and the face of Greta Thunberg had been edited onto another image. The original image was found on various websites. The picture is of a girl in a green hijab and this image is available for download from Pixabay, a website for sharing photos, illustrations, vector graphics, film footage, and music.


We noticed the words "Secret News" on the viral screenshot and found that this is a French website that described itself as "a free and independent collaborative parody medium bringing together several contributors."

https://secretnews.fr/a-propos/

We also searched for this article on OpIndia's website and found nothing related to the claim.

We then compared the viral screenshot with an original story published on OpIndia's website and found that the viral image had an orange colour highlight under the "Home" tab, which was not added on OpIndia's website. Secondly, the viral text has grammatical errors such as "into car accident" and "became orphan", which is unlikely to be present in an official news article.

Evidently, it is clear that the screenshot is fake.


Claim Review:Greta Thunberg was born into a Muslim family
Claimed By:Social Media User
Claim Reviewed By:NewsMeter
Claim Source:Social Media
Claim Fact Check:False
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