"We Were Only Conversing and Playing"

And the army left. Some of the munāfiqūn were speaking among themselves, and they said: do you think that fighting the Romans is like Arabs fighting each other? You are going to come back tied up in ropes. Speaking such words in an army that is going out to meet an enemy is not good; this is demoralising. It is not good to talk in such a way — to put fear in the hearts of the soldiers and terrify them about their enemy. And even though this conversation was private, Allah (swt) exposed them to Muḥammad (peace be upon him). The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) told ʿAmmār ibn Yāsir: go to those men and ask them what they have said, because they have burned themselves — iḥtaraqū. Adrikhum: catch them, because they have burned themselves, and ask them what they have said; and if they do not admit it, tell them: you said such-and-such; you said so-and-so. So ʿAmmār ibn Yāsir went and told them: this is what you said.

They came back to the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) apologising. When they came to the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him), they said: O Messenger of Allah, we were just joking. And Allah (swt) revealed the ayah:

So Allah (swt) says: and if you ask them, they will surely say: we were only conversing and playing. Say: is it Allah and His verses and His Messenger that you were mocking? Make no excuse; you have disbelieved after your belief. If We pardon one faction of you, We will punish another faction, because they were criminals. And these are verses 65 and 66 of Sūrat al-Tawbah. These āyāt make it clear that joking about and mocking anything of religious value is ḥarām, and it can reach the level of kufr, because Allah (ʿazza wa jall) says: lā taʿtadhirū qad kafartum baʿda īmānikum — make no excuse; you have disbelieved after your belief. And if one looks at it — what had they said? They had just said that the Romans were going to defeat you.

So this tells us that mocking, making fun of anything in Islam — whether it is making fun of the Qur'an, making fun of the hadith, making fun of the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him), or joking in a way that is disrespectful to the divinity of Allah (ʿazza wa jall) — all of this is very, very dangerous; it can lead to kufr, and it is a sign of nifāq. So we need to be very careful not to make jokes and fun, because sometimes there are jokes that are inappropriate: there are jokes that make fun of āyāt of the Qur'an, or a sūrah of the Qur'an, and this should be avoided because of the extreme danger in it; it is blasphemy. So as Muslims we need to be very cautious. It also tells us that Islam is sacred, and we have to hold it in high esteem and give it the sanctity it deserves. We should not belittle our religion, and we should not let anyone else belittle our religion.

So these stern warnings were to the munāfiqūn, who were making fun of the Muslims and the abilities of the Muslims. And today too, if we apply these meanings to our modern day: even if we are weak or disunited, we should not spread rumours and words that weaken the Muslims, and we should not implant in the minds of the Muslims that your enemy is undefeatable, and that you are weak, and that you have no hope and no future. We as Muslims should not engage in any of these things. We need to uplift the ummah; we need to encourage the ummah; we need to remind the ummah that kuntum khayra ummatin ukhrijat li-al-nās — you are the best nation brought forth for mankind (3:110). We need to remind the ummah of its bright past, and its bright future too — because we as Muslims do have a bright future, because the future belongs to the muttaqūn: wa al-ʿāqibatu li-al-muttaqīn — the end belongs to the people of taqwā (7:128). So we should not speak about the ability and the strength and the power of the kuffār, and the weakness and disunity of the Muslims, in a way that demoralises the Muslims and makes them give up and accept the status quo. As Muslims we should not do that.