Fatwa of the Day #3

(I will be moving this segment “Fatwa of the Day” to a separate blog soon. Meanwhile I will keep posting them here.) 

A Fatwa have surfaced on the Islamic religious forum ahlalhdeeth.com, which claims that, according to several narrations in the Islamic Hadith, the replication of God’s creations (humans, animals etc..) is “Haram” (impermissible), even in drawing. This can explain one of the reasons that might have driven Muslims to protest the “Draw Mohamed” phenomenon; however this is not the subject of this Fatwa. This one is related to EMOTICONS! It prohibits the use of smiley faces & co. on internet forums, chat rooms, blogs, emails and even in SMS. If you have read the previous two Fatwa’s that I have posted (the one about killing Mickey Mouse and the one about breastfeeding adult strangers), this shouldn’t be too bizarre in comparison. This edict, however, can be divided into 3 parts: 

1) Attempting to simulate God’s creations is a sin. Drawing any face that has eyes, a nose and a mouth, regardless of how distorted they are, is prohibited. In other words, even though a smiley face such as this one :-] can only be “read” if you visually flip it 90 degrees to right, it is still a prohibited, simply because it has the three facial features I mentioned above.

2) Women are specifically proscribed from using emoticons while chatting online, especially if they are engaging in a private conversation with a male stranger. This is because, in Islam, a woman is not allowed to communicate her feelings to a man who is a “non-mahram brother”. However, if women think wisely they can solve this problem simply by breastfeeding this stranger – at least five times. By doing so a family bond will be created between the two and the man will no longer be an “outsider”.

3) A third reason for this ban comes from the Hadith as well. One narration states “Angels do not enter a house in which there is a dog or a picture”. So in order not to prevent those winged creatures from entering your house, make sure there are no pictures inside; and if you’re writing a message online, make sure you don’t type in “a colon, a dash and a closed parenthesis” consecutively; and finally don’t forget to keep your dog in the backyard at all times!