Are recent videos of Muslims praying on Brooklyn streets staged or authentic?
Executive summary
Recent fact-checking shows the clip of Muslims praying in a Brooklyn street is authentic footage of a public prayer — not an AI fabrication — but its timing and the viral claim that it was a Fajr (5 a.m.) prayer are incorrect: the video was not filmed at 5 a.m. and instead depicts one of the daytime prayers, with Fajr in the cited day occurring at 3:45 a.m. [1] [2]. Multiple prayer-time calendars confirm Fajr and sunrise times that make the “5 a.m. Fajr” claim implausible for the day cited [1] [3] [4].
1. What the fact-checkers found: authentic footage, misattributed time
Investigations by Snopes and related outlets concluded the clip genuinely shows Muslims praying on a Brooklyn street and contains no signs of AI manipulation, but it was mischaracterized online as a 5 a.m. Fajr prayer; the original video did not record the prayer time claimed by those sharing it [1] [2].
2. Why the “5 a.m. Fajr” claim fails — prayer and daylight data
Fact-checkers compared the video’s visible daylight with official prayer calculations and found Fajr that day was at 3:45 a.m., while the city’s earliest sunrise in 2025 was about 5:24 a.m. — meaning the scene in daylight does not match a 5 a.m. dawn prayer and is consistent with a daytime salah instead [1] [2] [3].
3. Authentic public prayers are not unprecedented in NYC
Public congregational prayers and gatherings by Muslims in New York have been reported before in public spaces — Times Square, Washington Square Park and Bedford–Stuyvesant are cited examples — so street prayers in Brooklyn fit into documented precedents rather than being extraordinary staged events [1].
4. Sources say no evidence of AI or staging
Both Snopes and a Yahoo-affiliate fact-check explicitly state the clip showed no signs of artificial-intelligence manipulation and treat the footage as genuine video of a prayer gathering, not a staged or synthetic creation [1] [2].
5. What the viral narratives added — and why they matter
Online posts added a political frame — accusing participants of asserting “religious dominance” or pushing for Sharia — claims not supported in the reporting; fact-checkers emphasize the timing error rather than any evidence of organized political intent in the footage [1] [2].
6. How prayer-time databases corroborate timing context
Independent prayer-time services and mosque calendars list Fajr, Zuhr, Asr, Maghrib and Isha for Brooklyn and provide daily schedules that fact-checkers used to assess whether the scene’s lighting matched a dawn prayer; those tools confirm Fajr times that day do not line up with a 5 a.m. daylight scene [5] [3] [4].
7. Limitations in the reporting and remaining unknowns
Available sources do not name the person who recorded the clip, do not provide on-the-ground witness statements identifying the prayer as a specific salat, and do not specify the exact street location or date in all reports; those gaps mean we cannot conclusively say which prayer (Zuhr, Asr, etc.) is shown beyond the fact it was not 5 a.m. Fajr as claimed [1] [2]. Available sources do not mention any forensic metadata analysis of the original video file.
8. Why context matters — how misinformation spreads
This episode follows a pattern where authentic clips are repurposed with wrong timestamps or political narratives; fact-checkers warn such repackaging inflames social tensions even when the media itself is real, and they urge scrutiny of time, location and accompanying claims before sharing [1] [2].
Bottom line: reputable fact-checking reports conclude the Brooklyn street-prayer video is real and not AI-generated, but the viral claim that it shows a 5 a.m. Fajr prayer is false — timing evidence and prayer-time calendars indicate the footage shows a daytime prayer, not predawn worship [1] [2] [3].