"Forced To Do Muslim Prayer"

About

"Forced To Do Muslim Prayer" refers to a conspiracy theory purported in a tweet, which incorrectly stated that pictures of American schools performing tornado drills were actually forcing students to perform Muslim prayers.

Origin

On April 10th, 2017, Twitter user @cuckpatroller posted a series of photographs (shown below) of elementary school students performing tornado drills under the caption, "AMERICAN MIDDLE-SCHOOL CAUGHT FORCING STUDENTS TO DO MUSLIM PRAYERS 5 TIMES A DAY. TIME 2 REVOKE FUNDING! RT!!" The account has since been suspended.

The photographs were obtained from a number of sources. The first comes from the Danville, VA Public School website,^[1] in which they posted the date of their March 20th, 2012 tornado drill.

The image on the top right comes from an April 2013 news broadcast about tornado drills in a Miamisburg, OH elementary school.^[2]

The final image can be found on a KGWN news story about tornado drills in Cheyenne, WY public schools.^[3] Twitter user @JiggaRay also used the picture on April 4th, 2017, when he tweeted the photo under the caption "In 2017, schools close down for possible tornado warnings. Back in the 90s, they still made us go to school and do this just in case." The tweet received more than 8,500 retweets and 11,600 likes.

Spread

On April 12th, Twitter user @ariscott^[4] posted a screenshot of @cuckpatroller's original tweet alongside a response to the tweet under the caption "When twitter is good." The tweet received more than 30,000 retweets and 56,000 likes.

On April 13th, the viral content websites Someecards^[5] and Distractify^[6] both covered the exchange.

That day, Redditor TheKingTodo posted one of the photos to the /r/dankmemes subreddit. The post received more than 360 points (96% upvoted).

Search Interest

External References