A photo of Justin Trudeau wearing a head garb circulated on social media August 29, claiming Trudeau converted to Islam. The photo, originally taken at Halloween in 2016, was altered and taken out of context, with a quote attributed to the Canadian prime minister.
“After meeting thousands of Syrian Refugees and learning more about their faith, I have learned to love Islam,” the quote said. “Islam promotes peace and is in fact more peaceful than Christianity. Islam is the religion that I identify with.”
The photo with the quote first appeared on the Facebook page “Justin Trudeau Not.” It then migrated to Twitter August 30, getting widely shared the following week.
Trudeau apparently announced his conversion to Islam on August 26, 2016. On that day, however, the prime minister was in Saguenay, a city in the province of Québec, for the National Caucus summer meeting of the Liberal party, according to his official itinerary.
The quote most likely originated from an August 28, 2016 article from the Vatican Enquirer, a news website that claims to take a “satirical look at headlines around the world.” However, most articles on the website show no obvious signs of satire and the disclaimer is not accessible from the front page, leaving many people to share the news as true. This particular article was shared nearly 8,000 times according to social media monitoring tool CrowdTangle.