Claim: The Chinese government is destroying mosques after declaring Islam a mental illness.
Fact: This is false. The viral video actually shows the demolition of a theme park in Indonesia, not mosques in China.
A one-minute and seventeen-second video showing a mosque being demolished, is being widely shared on Twitter and TikTok by users, claiming that it shows a mosque being demolished in China.
A user on X shared the video with the caption: “BREAKING: China officially declares Islam a ‘mental illness’ and is destroying hundreds of mosques.”
Sharing the same video on TikTok, a user wrote, “They have started taking down the mosques in China.”
Similar posts can be seen on TikTok and X, including here, here, here, here, here and here.
With the claim being widely shared online, Newschecker decided to verify the authenticity of the video that has been shared across multiple platforms.
Factcheck/ Verification
We began by conducting a keyword search on whether China has indeed called Islam a mental illness. This led us to an Al Jazeera opinion piece, where the author had claimed that China had called Islam as a mental illness.
On further research, we found a report by New York Magazine, which said that the state had termed Islam an ‘Ideological illness.’ Quoting an excerpt from an official Chinese Communist Party recording obtained by the Radio Free Asia, the article read, “Members of the public who have been chosen for re-education have been infected by an ideological illness. They have been infected with religious extremism and violent terrorist ideology, and therefore they must seek treatment from a hospital as an inpatient.” Thus, we find that the claim, that China declared Islam as a ‘mental illness’, is from an alleged audio recording that has been accessed by Radio Free Asia.
We then analysed the video showing a mosque being demolished. We ran a reverse image search on the keyframes from the video and found a similar video posted by a YouTube channel named ‘Heru Bakmal‘ with the caption “END OF HIBISC FANTASY PUNCAK TRAVEL STORY,” on March 7, 2025.
Additionally, we found an Instagram post from the account ‘infopuncak.bgr‘ with the caption, “Demolition of the Hibisc Fantasy Puncak recreation center, which stands in the middle of the tea plantation, Cisarua, Bogor Region, continues Friday (7/3),” posted on March 7, 2025.
Based on both captions, we further looked into this incident through keyword research and confirmed that the demolition of the mosque-like structure is from the theme park Hibisc Fantasy Puncak tourist site in Indonesia.
Conclusion
The viral video claiming that China is destroying a mosque, along with the claim that China has officially declared Islam a ‘mental illness’ and is destroying hundreds of mosques, is false. The video actually shows the demolition of a mosque-like structure in a theme park in Indonesia, not mosques in China.
Result: False
Our Sources
Al Jazeera opinion piece dated November 28, 2018.
News report from New York Magazine, dated August 28, 2018.
News article from Radio Free Asia, dated August 8, 2018.
YouTube video posted by Heru Bakmal, dated March 7, 2025.
Instagram post from ‘infopuncak.bgr,’ posted on March 7, 2025.
News report from CNN Indonesia, dated March 11, 2025.
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