I’m Just Joking!
With the great American holiday of April Fool’s having just passed us, the permissibility of exaggeration and stretching the truth in joking has been a hot issue. Is it okay to be sarcastic? Why can’t we stretch the truth a bit? Isn’t it okay if we’re just joking?
In our efforts to follow the hadith of Muhammad [saw], some of us have become insta-scholars, proclaiming rulings on the issue without really thinking it through (trust me, myself included). Below, Shaykh Salman gives us another balanced view of the issue with his awesome wisdom, masha Allah. Reading this fatwa puts a whole new spin on what it means to be “just kidding.”
Question: It is not allowed in Islam to lie, even when joking. But does it also count as a lie if what the person is saying is simply sarcastic, and the other person knows that it is just mean to be that way. For example, if I am writing something down and someone looks at me and asks: “Are you writing?”, and I say: “No, I am playing football.” In these cases it is just sarcasm and it is too obvious that it is not true. Please help me out with this one, as so many of us indulge into such minor sarcastic jokes everyday.
Answered by the Fatwa Department Research Committee - chaired by Sheikh `Abd al-Wahhâb al-Turayrî
Deliberate lies and falsehoods must not be employed as a means to make people laugh.
The Prophet (peace be upon him) said: “Woe to the person who gives a speech to people and lies to make them laugh. Woe to him, woe to him.” [Sunan Abî Dâwûd (4990), Sunan al-Tirmidhî (2315), and Sunan al-Dârimî (2702)]
What you are asking about are sarcasm and irony - rhetorical devices in the language which communicate meanings that are clearly understood from their contexts.
Sarcasm is to say something with an underlying insulting or caustic implication. Irony is a form of expression in which an understood implicit meaning is concealed or contradicted by the explicit meaning of the expression. Sarcasm is often used in conjunction with irony. Both of these modes of speech are often conveyed with a particular vocal intonation when spoken and are sometimes rendered with italics when written, like in: “Great! That’s all I need!” or “Oh, very funny”.
What matters is the honesty of the meaning that is being conveyed by the communication, not the literal implications of the words.
For instance, in the example that you give in your question, a person is writing something down. The onlooker can see this, but asks: “Are you writings something?”
The person who is writing responds to the onlooker’s question by saying: “No, I am playing football.”
What he means is: “Of course I am writing, and it is silly of you to ask.” This is the meaning that is communicated and understood.
In English, there are some phrases that are always ironic. Consider when a person says: “Big deal” or “Wise guy”.
Therefore, ironic and sarcastic statements are not lies, any more than figurative speech is a lie. “He was a lion on the football field” is a figurative statement, not a lie - though certainly the football player is not a great cat.
In the same way, irony and sarcasm are recognized modes of speech which convey an intended meaning understood by both the speaker and the listener.
Irony and sarcasm are therefore quite different than a joke that is a deliberate lie, where the teller of the joke means to communicate a falsehood. Whether or not the listener is aware that it is a lie, what matters is that the speaker fully intends to communicate by what he says a meaning that is false, with the intention of provoking laughter on account of that falsehood.
And Allah knows best.
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4 Responses to “I’m Just Joking!”
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Nice job on letting the scholars speak on this, mashaAllah. I tried to write something similar to this two years ago and got a bit of a backlash (from people outside of Xanga who read it but didn’t comment), probably because it came from some foolio with a Xanga and too much time on his hands.
Anywho, my favorite lesson from learning about this April Fools issue is that included within the Hadith is that the Prophet (SAW) did in fact joke! Many of us feel alienated by the “Mauli Saab” type personalities of super seriousness, and unfortunately are conditioned to think religiosity = no fun. Not the case at all.
Cheer up, tell a joke, and keep it real to the Prophet’s words…
“I joke, but I speak nothing but the truth.”
Sal Allahu ‘alayhi wa sallam.
Very enlightening Fatwa - Thanks for putting it up!
Hey, did you see his latest article that was released on April 10th - you ought to get that one up too, really nice, about having both knowledge and using mercy when doing daw’ah, and he mentions a number of different personalities you might meet along the way doing daw’ah =D
Siraaj
AbdelRahman’s note: the article Siraaj is talking about is here http://islamtoday.com/showme2.cfm?cat_id=36&sub_cat_id=1848
what about a “joke” thats is true, but hurts the other person. Would it still be wrong? A touchy subject and someone makes a joke and it hurts someone else…would that be wrong?
Unknown,
Allahu alam on the permissibility of it in Islamic law, per se - but I do think that it’s safe to say that it’s recommended to stay away from making statements that hurt other’s feelings, joking or not joking. Especially in the case of a joke, where the statement is not needed (as opposed to a necessary statement that may be hurtful, yet true), I’d say it’s best to stay away from making such jokes.
As we see in the life and examples of the Prophet [saw], he would always phrase his statements in a way that was easy on the ears of others. Allahu alam.