The Ruling on Lying to Make People Laugh with Jokes and Anecdotes
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
Question:
Honorable Shaykh, if a man lies in order to make people laugh, and they know that he is lying, and this is what is called a joke or an anecdote, does this fall under the warning?
Answer:
The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) used to joke, but he did not say anything but the truth. So a person should not lie in order to make people laugh. If he mentions an anecdote or a joke that makes them laugh and it is true, there is nothing wrong with that, provided that the joke or anecdote is true and actually happened. And he should mention it in order to cheer people up; there is nothing wrong with that. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) used to joke, but he did not say anything but the truth, meaning something that actually happened, something that is true. Yes.
Honorable Shaykh, if a man lies in order to make people laugh, and they know that he is lying, and this is what is called a joke or an anecdote, does this fall under the warning?
Answer:
The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) used to joke, but he did not say anything but the truth. So a person should not lie in order to make people laugh. If he mentions an anecdote or a joke that makes them laugh and it is true, there is nothing wrong with that, provided that the joke or anecdote is true and actually happened. And he should mention it in order to cheer people up; there is nothing wrong with that. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) used to joke, but he did not say anything but the truth, meaning something that actually happened, something that is true. Yes.
Source
شرح بلوغ المرام من أدلة الأحكام [ صالح الفوزان ]، تتمة باب الرهب من مساوئ الأخلاق — islamhouse.com (1:05:54)
The Arabic text is a machine transcription of the audio recording.