BY: Mustapha Lawal
Claim:
A video shows Mr Joe Biden, the incumbent President of the United States of America, reciting Arabic prayers.
Photo Credit: Screenshot of the Video | FactCheckAfrica
Verdict:
The video of President Joe Biden reciting Arabic prayers is False! FactCheckAfrica’s findings show that the alleged video is a deepfake clip.
Full Text
A video circulating on WhatsApp shows the American President, Joe Biden reciting Arabic duas [prayers].
The footage was captioned: “President of USA Joe Biden recites Dua in Arabic @ 82. Dis e don pan cam. VICTORY TO ISLAM. ALLAHU AKBARR”.
The 50-second clip has been shared across many closed groups on the SM platform and has been tagged “forwarded many times”, an identifier deployed by WhatsApp to combat the spread of rumors, viral messages, and fake narratives.
Given the subject’s prominence and the sensitivity of matters around religion and misinformation, FactCheckAfrica conducted this fact check to determine the authenticity of the video.
Verification
A keyword search about President Biden reciting Arabic prayers by FactCheckAfrica yielded no result. The closest to that was Biden’s reported use of the Islamic term ‘inshallah’ during a debate. However, there is no reliable information available that he recited a full prayer in Arabic.
FactCheckAfrica analyzed the alleged video for traces of manipulation. We can confirm that the audio did not synchronize with Biden’s lip movements — a common red flag to deepfake content generated with artificial intelligence technology.
The audio of the speech was checked with Eleven Labs, an AI speech classifier. The result indicated that “a likely probability of 82% that the audio file was generated with ElevenLabs. This suggests that the video is a deepfake generated with AI.
Further findings reveal that the original version of the video was posted on the TikTok account of New York Post in October 2023 showing Biden’s interview with CBS.
Conclusion
Investigation conducted by FactCheckAfrica reveals that the video being circulated widely is AI-generated and false. There is no report of the American President reciting Arabic prayers.
