Anyone whose tongue acts like a snake or scorpion and is...

Anyone whose tongue acts like a snake or scorpion and is busy hurting others through his speech whether it be by makes of backbiting, levelling false accusations against others, making fun of other people, humiliating them, destroying their character, cursing them, etc… and injures other people is not considered a Muslim! There are many people who are tricked and misled by Shaitan and thus when they are involved in a serious conversation, they protect their tongue (from speaking bad things).

However when they are busy joking with others, they perform these same things which they would not do while engaged in a serious discussion.

For example, when a person is busy joking with others, he may humiliate or make fun of his Muslim brother or bug him and then he will say, that “I was only joking with you and I did not mean what I said.” Sometimes, such joking is even worse than speaking the truth because when a person is speaking the truth, he is limited and maintains restrictions and boundaries in what he is saying.

However when one begins to joke around, then these limits and boundaries are often transgressed.[^2] If we look carefully through history, we see that court jesters and clowns used to speak truthful things to those in their presence, but they spoke of such truths in their jokes and amusements.

The function of them was not just to keep the kings busy, rather, one of the philosophies of them was that whenever those around the king could not tell something very important to him directly, they would pass the information on to the clown or jester and he would convey this information to the king in a way of amusement! Thus, the jokes and playing of the jester was actually more serious than the truth!

A true believer is one who is very respected in Islam and we are not permitted to joke in this way with a true believer nor can we destroy his character or personality. May we seek refuge with Allah (SwT) if one of us - under the pretence of making a joke - destroys the character of another believer![^3] At this point, we look at the topic of refraining from doubtful things.

In the Science of Jurisprudence ('Ilmul Fiqh), actions which are Makruh (discouraged) fall into the category of being permissible to perform and it has been mentioned that in all areas where there is a doubt - whether the act is obligatory or forbidden - the principle is that it is permissible.