Photo shows Bangladeshi Muslims praying after cyclone, not following deadly floods
A photo of Muslims praying while standing in chest-high water in May 2020 has resurfaced in social media posts that falsely claimed it was taken after deadly floods washed through Bangladesh in August 2024. The photographer who captured the image told AFP it in fact shows people praying in a mosque after flooding caused by Cyclone Amphan, which killed more than 100 people and affected millions in Bangladesh and neighbouring India after it hit in May 2020.
"Bangladesh is in a terrible state right now due to the terrible flood," read part of the caption to an image shared on Facebook on August 26, 2024.
"Look at these mullahs. One gets the result of one's karma, but it happens so soon. The sinners who had destroyed the temple are having to take shelter there today," added the caption, which was written in Hindi, the most common language in Hindu-majority India.
The photo, showing Muslim men praying while standing in chest-high waters, was shared after heavy flooding in low-lying Bangladesh that killed at least 40 people and forced nearly 300,000 to take refuge in emergency shelters (archived links here and here).
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The deadly floods in the South Asian Muslim-majority nation followed weeks of political turmoil that culminated in the toppling of autocratic leader Sheikh Hasina, who fled to neighbouring India by helicopter on August 5.
The post appeared to reference false claims that dozens of Hindu temples had been burned to the ground in the chaotic wake of Hasina's ouster (archived link).
While religious rights groups said they had documented hundreds of attacks on minority communities -- including Hindus who account for about eight percent of Bangladesh's 170 million people -- false reports spreading online suggested the violence against Hindus was orders of magnitude worse than reality.
The same image was shared alongside similar claims elsewhere on Facebook here and here, and on social media platform X here.
The photo, however, is old and unrelated to the flooding in Bangladesh in August 2024.
Photo from 2020
A reverse image search on Google led to the same photo on the website of the International Photography Awards (archived link).
The photo is titled "Pray for mercy" and is credited to photographer Sharwar Hussain. A description beneath the photo says it was taken in Satkhira, Bangladesh.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the image used in the false posts (left) and the same photo on the International Photography Awards website (right):
A keyword search found the same image posted on Instagram by Hussain on March 29, 2022 (archived link).
Its caption read: "Great to see my work is in the winning list @wwdphc -2022. this is a single photo from my long-term documentary project under the title 'Tears of Global Warming'."
The photo won second place in the 2022 edition of the World Water Day Photo Contest (WWDPHC) (archived link).
Hussain, a Bangladesh-based documentary photographer, told AFP he was "very disappointed" to see his picture shared out of context.
"This picture was taken from Satkhira, Bangladesh, in 2020, during the super cyclone Amphan," he said on August 28, 2024.
"There was no dry land around this locality where people could perform their daily prayers, so people performed only the jummah prayer in this mosque under the knee and chest level of stuck tidal water."
Amphan savaged south-west Bangladesh and eastern India in May 2020, killing more than 100 people (archived link).
The storm flattened entire villages, uprooted trees and ruined fish ponds; tens of thousands of acres of farmland and fruit plantations were also devastated by saltwater from Amphan's accompanying storm surge.
AFP has debunked other false claims linked to the unrest in Bangladesh here.
