Does a real video show a group of Muslim men kneeling on prayer rugs while riding on the London Tube? No, that's not true: This video is AI-generated. The Hive Moderation AI-generated content detection tool determined the video was 99.9% likely to be AI-generated. There are multiple glitches and inconsistencies in the video pointing to the video being AI-generated -- one man has six fingers, a woman is wearing unmatched shoes, the train interior does not match existing trains, and the patterns on the prayer rugs are inconsistent with design conventions.
The fake video appeared in a post (archived here) published by the X account @ayadkhdhir on August 3, 2026. It was captioned:
MUSLIMS BLOCKING THE TUBE IN LONDON AND FRUSTRATING COMMUTERS !!!!! 😡😡😡😡 THIS IS SADIQ KHANS SHAKIRA LAW LONDON. WE NEED OUT COUNTRY BACK NOWWW!!!! 🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧
This is the thumbnail image of the video:
(Image source: @ayadkhdhir post on X.)
Lead Stories uploaded a clip of the video to Hive Moderation (archived here). The AI-generated content detection tool determined the video was 99.9% likely to be AI generated.
(Image source: Hive Moderation.)
There are also several visual glitches in the video which point to the video being AI-generated (pictured below). The first kneeling man wearing white appears to have six fingers on his right hand. The index finger of the man to his right is bent in an anatomically impossible way. The woman to his right is wearing a black shoe on her left foot and a white shoe (or no shoe at all) on the right foot. Directly across the aisle from her is a person who has their shoes laced from top to bottom, tied with a bow at the toe.
(Image source: details from @ayadkhdhir video on X.)
The train car pictured has both red and yellow stanchions, with some of the red poles having yellow couplings at the floor and ceiling. A Google Image search for "London Tube Interior" (archived here) and a "Rolling Stock Information Sheet" from London Underground (archived here) do not show this color combination on real trains.
The praying men and the design of the rugs are additional clues the video does not depict a scene from reality. Muslims always pray facing the qiblah (archived here), the direction toward the Kaaba in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Thus, Muslims praying all around the world face toward a single point. Two rows of people facing each other as pictured would be disregarding this fundamental rule.
The prayer rugs in the video have a limited number of colors: red, yellow, blue, and green, and appear as if they are all from the same production run. But closer inspection shows that the rugs are not all the same patterns, and these small variations--like a diamond oriented horizontally on one rug and vertically on another--would be unlikely in mass production. The red carpet in the lower right corner appears to be much larger than the other rugs, and it has an asymmetrical corner motif rather than a centered motif like the others (pictured below left). While not all commercially available prayer rugs have a directional design, a Google image search for "prayer rug design" (archived here) shows that most do (pictured below right).
(Image source: detail from @ayadkhdhir video on X and Google.)
The prayer rug entry on Britannica (archived here) describes this design convention:
Prayer rugs are characterized by the prayer niche, or mihrab, an arch-shaped design at one end of the carpet. The mihrab, which probably derives from the prayer niche in mosques, must point toward Mecca while the rug is in use.
Other fact checks
This claim was also investigated by Digital Forensics, Research and Analytics Center (DFRAC) (archived here).
