Is it permissible to tell some fictional stories to children if they are beneficial?
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
The questioner : There is a question about upbringing, but...
The Shaykh: Go ahead.
The questioner : So, in our school now, in every shift, there are purely fictional stories, but they contain educational lessons, and they may or may not have religious benefit; is that permissible or not?
The Shaykh : I mean what I am saying; it may be permissible on the condition that it is understood and firmly established in the student's mind that it is a fictional story and not a real fact. As for throwing fictional stories at students so that they imagine them to be true, real stories; this is not permissible because of the lying involved in it, and in training and accustoming students from the tender age of their infancy to accepting and believing lies without realizing that it is merely acting and imagination. Therefore, it is necessary to accompany the presentation of that fictional story with a clarification of the truth if it contains benefit and a lesson. This is complete, and in fact, this ruling deserves more clarification than clarifying the weakness of a Prophetic hadith if the hadith contains wisdom and benefit. A teacher or preacher or instructor may cite it for that reason, but he must follow it with a clarification of the weakness of this hadith so that the listening people do not imagine that it is a sound hadith from the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him).
The point here is that this weak hadith was narrated, and as some say, it is possible that the Messenger (peace be upon him) said it, but it did not reach us through a sound path. As for the question, the story is fabricated and invented, so it is thrown at the students while its status is known = -- Welcome -- = so clarification is necessary, even if by way of implication; meaning, when that story is told to the student, he should be made to feel that the intention of the story is the lesson, and the intention is not to report that it actually happened. This is what I see in this issue. Please go ahead.
The questioner : I have a case of three...
The Shaykh : What Allah willed! May He bless you in it.
The Shaykh: Go ahead.
The questioner : So, in our school now, in every shift, there are purely fictional stories, but they contain educational lessons, and they may or may not have religious benefit; is that permissible or not?
The Shaykh : I mean what I am saying; it may be permissible on the condition that it is understood and firmly established in the student's mind that it is a fictional story and not a real fact. As for throwing fictional stories at students so that they imagine them to be true, real stories; this is not permissible because of the lying involved in it, and in training and accustoming students from the tender age of their infancy to accepting and believing lies without realizing that it is merely acting and imagination. Therefore, it is necessary to accompany the presentation of that fictional story with a clarification of the truth if it contains benefit and a lesson. This is complete, and in fact, this ruling deserves more clarification than clarifying the weakness of a Prophetic hadith if the hadith contains wisdom and benefit. A teacher or preacher or instructor may cite it for that reason, but he must follow it with a clarification of the weakness of this hadith so that the listening people do not imagine that it is a sound hadith from the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him).
The point here is that this weak hadith was narrated, and as some say, it is possible that the Messenger (peace be upon him) said it, but it did not reach us through a sound path. As for the question, the story is fabricated and invented, so it is thrown at the students while its status is known = -- Welcome -- = so clarification is necessary, even if by way of implication; meaning, when that story is told to the student, he should be made to feel that the intention of the story is the lesson, and the intention is not to report that it actually happened. This is what I see in this issue. Please go ahead.
The questioner : I have a case of three...
The Shaykh : What Allah willed! May He bless you in it.
Source
www.al-albany.com
The Arabic text is copied verbatim from the original source, without any edits.