Coming back again to the topic of lying from my previous post here, I was just wondering why people lie?
It starts off when we are kids, being told to lie on the phone, “mom is not home” or “dad is not home” or some other excuse why mom and dad cant come on the phone….then it moves on to excuses at school… excuses… for not doing the home work, for being late, for missing school.. etc etc. it progresses to lying when ever we feel we will get in trouble for telling the truth.. or when we do something wrong, we have to hide it by telling a lie……by this time lying has become second nature to us and we lie left right centre whenever it suites us .. to get out of any kind of mess that we are in!
Then there are white lies that we tell “for the good” of people. Our justifications : “Its okay to lie if it doesn’t harm any one!” or “its okay to lie if telling the truth would hurt the other person!”
I believe that white lies, thought they may appear to be good for the time being, cause nothing but trouble later on and you eventually have to tell the truth! Like if ur friend cooked a dish lets say some veg you really are not fond of… and u don’t like that at all and to please her and to avoid hurting her feelings say “ Oh its wonderful… its really nice” eventually when she cooks it again on ur next visit or insists you take a second , third helping of the dreaded veg, you will eventually have to tell her!!!… errr I don’t eat this veg!! and frankly people are not dumb they get to know when u like something or not!
A lie is lie.. it’s a false statement no matter how you try to justify it. People lie when they are at fault or they have done something wrong or have not fulfilled their duties or obligations, people lie to please others, “makhaan lagana” is also lying.
People think that without lying we will become “robots” without any empathy or feelings or emotions- I don’t understand how does lying help us become more empathic or more emotional? If you don’t have anything good to say to others… keep quiet!
The dilemma of our society is that every one lies…and it is so common that the concept of a “lie free life” is too alien to comprehend – that it seems impossible.
To be continued… Why we should not lie.
gLiMpSes 
Going thru different topics in ur site was like knowing whatever i was yearning to know.
Please give more hadiths on this topic – lying.
Thank you.
shaheena althaf
You would definitely find few ahadiths where our prophet smiled or said nothing when told of a lie. I know one but not able to present that in a proper manner.
If you can fairly prove your lie with quran, ahadiths, companions of prophet (sallah o alaih e wassallam), or companions of companions of prophet (sallah o alaih e wassallam). Then you go.
What I know is even if you don’t lie where you are permitted to, you wouldn’t get any harm hereafter.
@Aleem,
Agreed that life is too complicated, but we have the Sunnah to follow.
There is no punishment in Islam.. or shud i say a thief is excluded from this punishment, if the theft was of food, reason? It falls on the community why the person was not paid zakat and thus he had to resort to stealing due to starvation.
Similarly, Muslims are allowed to hide to truth on certain occassions. If a muslim is tortured to give up his faith he can on the face of it hide his faith, or say somehting else since he is being tortured – there is no sin on him,Il post the exact hadiths in the article to follow, Inshallah.
None of us is being tortured to death or being asked to reveal military secrets etc! still we lie so much that a lie free life seems impossible.. doesnt it??:-)
A theif was brought in the court of khalifa Omar (radi Allah unh). H.Omar asked the theif why he had stolen. The theif replied he had been starving for days. To this Omar ordered “Do not cut his hands but provide him with employment”.
The point to note is, the punishment for theft is clearly stated in Quran. Then why did Omar not apply it?
Islam teaches us to use logic and “hikmat” in out judgments. If we were to follow stated rules blindly without understanding the context and circumstance, we would indeed be lost…
This is not to advocate lying but to point out that its not a two plus two game.
Life is too complicated to understand in black and white, it needs to be seen on a technicolor screen 🙂
Which remind me,, I need to book my seat for upcoming release of “Eragon” ;-D
My!…What an excellent article!!
“If you don’t have anything good to say to others… keep quiet!”
Agreed to the full…