Old Video Of A Concert From Turkey Viral As NewZealand Government’s New Anthem With 99 Names Of Allah

Currently, a video of a concert in a huge auditorium is going viral on social media. It was claimed that this event was held in New Zealand with their recent anthem on 99 different names of Allah. It was also claimed that this anthem was created by NewZeland government. 

However, fact Crescendo found the claim to be false. This is an Old video of a concert from Bosnia and not a recent anthem of New Zealand. 

What’s The Claim? 

Sharing this video, social media users are claiming that, “The New Zealand government created an “anthem” that was set to music and sung in front of thousands of people in Abadala church. It has 99 special names of Allah”

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Below you can see the same post shared by multiple users. 

Fact Check-

A close look at this showed that this video was telecasted by the TRT Canli channel which translated into TRT Live. According to the website, TRT is a Turkish Channel that stands for Turkish Radio and Television. 

We also noticed that in the bottom right corner of the video, ‘Saraybosna Faith Sultan Mehmet’ was mentioned. A Google keyword search revealed that Saraybosna Faith Sultan Mehmet is the largest single-dome mosque in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is located in the Balkan region from the Ottoman period. 

This raised our suspicion of whether this concert video is really from New Zealand. 

A Google Reverse Image Search on a keyframe of the viral video led us to the same video uploaded by a YouTube user in 2014. In the comment section, a few users mentioned that this video is from Bosnia and the singers were Turkish High School students. Another user mentioned that at that time President of Turkey, Abdullah Gul’s wife, and other state officials were seating in the front row.

Upon searching the above information, we came across President Abdullah Gul’s website. It was mentioned that President Gul and his wife listened to the songs performed by the Sarajevo Faith Sultan Mehmet Choir, who came to Turkey as the special guests of TRT Music channel in Hagia Eirene.

Below are few images of the concert that was published in the above website. 

A keyword search led us to a Turkish website in which a detailed report of the event was published on 31 May 2011. According to the report, this concert was held by Faith Sultan Mehmet Choir which consists of children from Bosnia, Croatia and Serbian nationalities. This group was invited by TRT Music as special guests. This choir also performed in a couple of more places in Turkey before this event. 

According to theTurkish News report, The Sultan Mehmet Faith Ensemble is a Sarajevo-based choir that performed at this event at Istanbul’s Aya Irini Museum. This event was organized on the occasion of the 558^th anniversary of the Ottoman conquest that took place in 1453. The choir performed a number of Muslim hymns, during the concert, which was organized by Turkey’s state-owned Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT). It was also mentioned that the name of the choir’s founder and art director is Mehmet Bajraktarevic who had directed many concerts in Europe. 

We checked Mehmet Bajraktarevic’s Facebook profile and we found an image of the same concert uploaded in 2011. He mentioned in the caption that this concert was organized in Turkey. 

After this, we searched for Aya Irini Museum on Google Maps. In one of the images we saw the same cross symbol on the dome and three windows in the background. Below you can see the comparison between the scene from the viral video and the image from Google Maps. 

Conclusion: 

Fact Crescendo found the viral claim to be false. The video is not of an anthem with 99 names of Allah, created by NewZeland government but an old video of a concert held in Turkey in 2011 to celebrate 558^th anniversary of Ottoman empire victory over Byzantine empire.