Here is some piece of bad news for all those casually hitting the laughing reaction on Facebook posts: it has been declared haram. Yep. A prominent Muslim Bangladeshi cleric with a huge online following has issued a fatwa against people using Facebook’s “haha” emoji to make fun of others.
Bangladeshi cleric, Sheikh Ahmadullah, who has 3 million followers on Facebook and YouTube, regularly appears on television shows. He discusses religious issues in the Muslim-majority country. Ahmadullah posted a three-minute video on Saturday in which he discussed the mocking of people on Facebook.
In the video, Ahmadullah issued a fatwa, an Islamic edict, against the ‘haha’ reaction of Facebook. In addition to this, he explained how it is “totally haram [forbidden]” for Muslims. According to Ahmadullah, people use it to ridicule others, which Islam does not allow.
“Nowadays we use Facebook’s haha emojis to mock people,” Ahmadullah said in the video. His video garnered more than two million times. However, he explained that if you use the emoji on a funny post and do not intend to make fun of the person who posted it, then it is permissible.
“If we react with haha emojis purely out of fun and the same was intended by the person who posted the content, it is fine,” he said. Nonetheless, he emphasized that Islam strictly forbids it if used to ridicule others. “But if your reaction intended to mock or ridicule people who posted or made comments on social media, Islam forbids it,” Ahmadullah added.
Ahmadullah urges Muslims to not use the laughing emoji
“For God’s sake, I request you to refrain from this act. Do not react with ‘haha’ to mock someone,” he said. “If you hurt a Muslim he may respond with bad language that would be unexpected.”
Ahmadullah is among Bangladesh’s new crop of internet-savvy Islamic preachers who have drawn millions of followers online. Thousands of followers reacted to his video, most of them positively. Meanwhile, several hundred made fun of it — using the same “haha” emoji. We are not sharing the video since it is in Bengali.
Jamia Uloom Islamia issued a fatwa against the world-famous online game Player’s Unknown Battlegrounds (PUBG) last year. It declared PUBG players to be excluded from the realm of Islam as they did shirk and their marriages to be voided. You will be shocked to find out why!
Well, the modern has heard of all sorts of fatwas. The Department of Islamic Affairs and Charitable Activities (IACAD) also declared a perplexing fatwa earlier. Muslims are not allowed to use another person’s WiFi without their permission or consent, it declared. It is ‘haram’ otherwise, IACAD asserted.
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