Posts claiming Nigerian woman facing death penalty for renouncing Islam are a hoax
'This lady, Zainab Muhammad, is facing the death penalty in Zamfara state, Nigeria, for converting from Islam to Christianity. She will be appearing in Sharia Court this Friday and might be sentenced to death for switching religions,' reads the first paragraph of the caption of an X post published on May 20, 2025.
Grounded in Islamic texts, sharia courts operate in twelve of northern Nigeria's Muslim-majority states and can try criminal cases. In the rest of Nigeria, the legal system is based solely on secular laws derived from the constitution (archived here, here and here).
The post, which has been shared more than 800 times, includes a picture of a woman wearing a headscarf, implying she is the person referred to in the caption.
The purported story of Muhammad was first published by the Nigerian online newspaper, Sahara Reporters, on May 20, 2025. It was subsequently removed but AFP Fact Check saw an archive of the article on Wayback Machine, which also disappeared.
Another media outlet, however, captured an archive of the Sahara story here.
It had rapidly spread on social media, such as here on X and in scores of Facebook posts, such as here and here.
It was also picked up by other popular Nigerian news platforms (like here, here and here).
However, after doubts emerged as to the story's veracity, Sahara Reporters and other outlets deleted their articles.
Indeed, the claim is false; the woman in the photo is not a Nigerian named Zainab Muhammad, nor is there a death penalty case pending in Zamfara state against a woman who converted to Christianity.
Using Google Lens to conduct reverse image searches on the keyframes from the video, AFP Fact Check traced the image to a TikTok video published on March 26, 2024 (archived here).
In the video, the woman speaks with an American accent and identifies herself on social media as 'Aaliaa'.
In the video, she talks about her mother's reaction to her conversion to Islam.
A review of her Instagram profile also led to a video dated May 18, 2025, with a caption expressing how much she missed her family in Senegal (archived here).
Via an InstaStory on May 21, 2025, she disassociated herself from the claim, and wrote that she has 'never stepped her foot in Nigeria & never had plans to'.
In a statement on May 20, 2025, a spokesperson for Zamfara governor Bala Idris explained that 'no such case exists before any Shari'ah court in Zamfara'.
'The Zamfara State Government has acted swiftly by summoning all relevant authorities and security agencies to verify the authenticity of the story, which ultimately proved to be a blatant falsehood created by Sahara Reporters,' Idris wrote on his verified X account (archived here).
'To ensure accountability and certainty, the state government has confirmed with the Grand Khadi of the Zamfara Sharia Court of Appeal regarding any similar cases. He stated that there has never been such a case before any Shari'a court in Zamfara State.'
Sharia law enforcement in Nigeria has fuelled religious tensions and exposed gaps in constitutional protections for religious freedom (archived here).
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