A “wonderful scene”, but doctored. On TikTok, Facebook or even YouTube, many Internet users have been deceived by a video showing snow falling in Mecca. We see pilgrims circulating around the Kaaba, within the al-Haram mosque, while snowflakes are falling.
The video was reportedly shot on January 1. It circulated in several languages, as well in Arabic as in French or in English.
FAKE OFF
This video is “incorrect” and has been “processed with effects”, has explained Hussein Al-Qahtani, spokesman for Saudi Arabia’s national meteorological center, on Sunday. An explanation also advanced by the official Makkah Province Twitter account.
If it happens to snow in Saudi Arabia, it was not snowflakes that fell in Mecca on Sunday, but rain, as announced it the Saudi Meteorological Center.
This is not the first time that Internet users have falsely claimed that it snowed on this sacred place. In 2020, images of a snow-covered mosque in Iran had been hijacked to suggest that they showed the Saudi capital.