Page 14 - What the Qur'an Says about Liars and Their Methods

LYING IS FORBIDDEN

O O ne of the greatest errors is for people to act ac-
cording to their own logic, or to the value judg-
ments widespread in their society, which often is
far from Islam, and not to the logic prescribed by Allah in the
Qur'an. In other words, they approve of, ignore, or implement,
comfortably and without thinking, the very behavior of which
Allah disapproves and thus will punish in the Hereafter. Lying
is the most prominent behavior of this type. Even though most
people know that lying is a bad moral characteristic, some peo-
ple merely pay lip service to this knowledge because so many
people have turned this serious character defect into a habit.
Allah points out this fact in the following verse of the Qur'an:
If you obeyed most of those on Earth, they would
misguide you from Allah's Way. They follow nothing
but conjecture. They are only guessing. (Surat al-
An`am, 6:116)
Interestingly, most people who come into contact with a
liar know when he or she is lying, but do not bother to expose
the lies. In other words, they allow the liar to continue spread-
ing his or her lies. Lying is a secret language among people,
one about which everybody remains silent.
When something valuable is broken, for instance, the per-
son who broke it may lie and deny having done so, thereby
saving the day according to his own mentality. In fact, he puts

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