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Last week, a controversy arose online when a photo was shared of mats and rugs draped on the railings of a Catholic Church in Tullamore.
David Mullins – who also occasionally writes on this platform, and who is a parliamentary assistant to Independent TD Carol Nolan – posted on X that “despite repeated requests from locals over a number of weeks, Muslim residents living nearby have refused to stop hanging their prayer mats and rugs from the Church’s railings.”
“Zero social etiquette or act of social dominance?” he asked. Mullins said he had verified the photographs as fully authentic prior to posting, that they had been taken by a Tullamore resident, and that he had been informed that the hanging of the material had been taking place for a period of at least two weeks.
The post garnered more than 500,000 views, and caught the attention of Dr Umar Al-Qadri, Chair of the Irish Muslim Council, who queried the photograph,
He said that they would be “investigating the origin of these images” and “if these are true who is behind this, and who is responsible for circulating them.”
Al-Qadri subsequently reached out to Tullamore Parish, who responded by sending him a statement saying that “the story circulating on social media regarding rugs being placed on church railings is completely untrue and has no basis in fact.”
Despite numerous emails and phone calls, Tullamore Parish did not respond to Gript’s queries – which asked how they could say the story was “completely untrue”, what steps they had taken to verify it, and if they were contending that the photo was fake.
Gript have been informed that other residents of Tullamore have since separately contacted the constituency office of Deputy Carol Nolan with additional photographs of the mats hanging on the church railings and expressed concern at how the people of Tullamore were being portrayed in sweeping terms online, with claims that the photos were created by AI or staged.
Mullins later posted additional photos of the mats on Twitter with this message:
“Regarding the persistent placing of rugs and mats and other items on Tullamore Church property. Please see the photos below which have been kindly provided by yet more Tullamore residents,” he said.
“The photos were provided to vindicate and corroborate the claims made on the original post, but more importantly because these persons felt they could not sit back and witness the integrity of their neighbours being questioned when their only motivation was to protect the sacred nature of their place of worship from acts of disrespect,” he said.
TECHNICAL ANALYSIS OF PHOTOS
A technical analysis of the photos, carried out by Gript, shows no signs that the photos were AI-generated, edited, or anything other than legitimate. The photos were taken on the 21st of July, in the late afternoon/evening, and from differing positions.
One resident of Tullamore, who provided Deputy Nolan’s office with photos, told Gript that the photos are “absolutely genuine” and that he had passed the church and taken photos of the rugs and mats as he had passed by that church railing as he was walking to the canal.
“The rail was taken up with rugs, which was just so unusual to see,” he told me. “At first I just saw it as laundry at the time, it was such an unusual sight.”
“I took snaps of it as it struck me as so bizarre at the time. Then I saw that people were saying online that it was an AI creation – but I knew that wasn’t true,” he said.
“It was such a bizarre sight, it felt very disrespectful to be honest,” he said. “In my experience, religious spaces are always being respected in the town.”
“My feeling was that I wouldn’t do it to my neighbour’s fence, not to mind a church railing,” he explained.
“The story is true, the photos show that, yet people were being called liars, called all sorts of names, online – and it felt as if some parties were trying to find locals to blame. I really felt that wasn’t right,” he said.
“Calling people names, suggesting it was fake when it is definitely true – I saw it with my own eyes and have the photos to prove it,” he said.
“It’s factual, they were there, I don’t really care who put them there, it’s disrespectful to churchgoers, and to people of faith,” he said.
This aligns with what David Mullins said in a response to Dr. Umar Al-Qadri – that the sole motivation of the resident who had first made the issue known to Carol Nolan’s team, was to have the mats and rugs removed as such actions were “grossly disrespectful.”
After the additional photographs were posted by Mullins, some of those who responded reasonably asked if this could “just be cleaning rather than making some kind of statement?”
In his reply, Mullins noted “That’s a fair question. A couple of things though. My original post asked whether it was a failure of social etiquette. Yes it was. What strongly suggests it moved out of that territory is that even when the residents expressed their upset around the way their place of worship was being treated, nothing changed. That moved it from plain ignorance into intentional willingness to disrespect, which is a social statement by its very nature.”
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