Old hoax about Muslims demanding pork-free menus is still false

If Your Time is short

• There is no evidence to support the claim that a Muslim "figure" demanded pork-free menus.

• The claim first appeared in 2017 on a now-defunct website that was known for publishing fabricated news, and was repeated on other sites that also seem to specialize in fake news.

• The photo included with the claim, of a woman wearing a head covering, is from a 2015 interview on a different topic that aired on CNN. The woman pictured has nothing to do with this claim.

See the sources for this fact-check

Social media users have revisited a falsehood about Muslims that has already been debunked.

A Facebook post’s headline says, "Muslim Figure: We must have Pork-Free Menus or We Will Leave U.S.," with a photo of a woman wearing a head covering, an American flag with stripes fashioned from strips of bacon and the words, "Bacon America great again!"

The post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)

There is no evidence to support the claim that a Muslim person made this demand.

The problematic claim originated in July 2017 on a site called All News 4 USA, which is no longer in operation but had been a purveyor of fake news. That story mentioned Muslims in the United States, but then gave an account of a situation that occurred in Chevigny-Saint-Sauveur, a city in France.

A June 28, 2017, report from conservative news site Breitbart that said the mayor of Chevigny-Saint-Sauveur said he would ban school menus that did not include pork "to promote secular values in schools." The Breitbart story did not mention any demands by Muslims, but its headline says the French mayor demanded pork in school lunches.

Viral image

stated on March 18, 2024 in a Facebook post

Image shows a Princess Kate “stunt double.”

The new Facebook post does not include all of those details, but it mimics the style of the 2017 post, including using pilfered photos from CNN stories on unrelated subjects.

The All News 4 USA story used a photo of a woman wearing a head covering that had been published with a CNN story in 2016. This latest Facebook claim used a photo of a different woman wearing a head covering that had aired on CNN in 2015. Neither CNN story was related to Muslims and pork.

Our ruling

A Facebook post’s headline says, "Muslim Figure: We must have Pork-Free Menus or We Will Leave U.S.," with a photo of a woman wearing a head covering.

There is no evidence to support the claim that a Muslim person made this demand.

The claim originated in 2017 on a fake-news website and has been debunked by multiple outlets. The original story references a situation that happened in France, not in the United States, and it involved a mayor demanding that pork be kept on menus, not Muslims demanding that pork be removed from menus.

The photo that accompanies the Facebook claim was taken from a story on an unrelated subject that aired on CNN in 2015.

We rate this claim Pants on Fire!