An image is spreading across social media that claims a “historic church” in the UK county of Wiltshire is being turned into a mosque and that the bodies buried there will be dug up and removed.
The image, which is spreading across sites like Twitter and Facebook, can be seen below.
The claims in the image above are complete lies, with no truth whatsoever. Firstly, the church in the picture isn’t in Wiltshire, it’s the St. Michael Church in Stanwix.
Secondly, there are no plans to turn that church, nor any church in Wiltshire, into a mosque. There is not much to be said about the rumour, other than to say it has been entirely made up.
Unlike many hoaxes, which originated from unknown corners of the Internet, this claim – which has clearly been deigned to stir up hatred and tensions towards the UK Muslim population – appears to have started from a [currently defunct] fake news website called The Daily Bale (a.k.a. The National British Resistance), who first circulated this hoax back in 2014.
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The man behind the site, Joshua Bonehill, was also responsible for spreading other fear mongering rumours, including the claim that a pub in Leicester refused to server military personal and the claim that fruits imported into the UK were contaminated with Ebola – stunts that nearly resulted in Bonehill receiving a custodial sentence.
The rumour is 100% false and not be spread across the Internet.
