Islamic View on Pranking

In Indonesian language they are called: iseng/jebakan. In Arabic, we call as laghwi (something that is useless). People in every country do prank like just for laughs, in television/radio station, they have each type of prank to entertain the audience.

Audience likes the TV show ‘just for laughs’, they watch regularly together with the family.
However, I think, some pranks like prank call will also make people angry. Even, he or she will die if the games are too dramatic, especially for peoples who have heart attack.

One day, I watched a prank show in the television, the actress acted like a ghost and pretended  to be like a little girl in an elevator. When people entered to the elevator, the elevator got stuck suddenly. Automatically people who were stuck in the lift  pressed any button, and when they returned, one little girl stared at them with sadly face. She actually came from one small hidden door in that elevator. Off course to make prank like that costs a lot of money.

Illustration by Tina Amalia
Illustration by Tina Amalia

The other prank that costs the highest amount of money perhaps when a host from Australian radio did a prank call. The host called a nurse in a hospital in the UK who was taking care of Prince William’s wife, Kate Middleton. Kate Middleton was pregnant.  The host of radio who pretended to be Queen Elizabeth asked the nurse with many private questions about the pregnancy, and the nurse answered happily. When the telephone had done, the nurse was very shocked because the host laughed and said, “thank you for cooperating with this prank call”. At the end, the nurse felt very ashamed and committed suicide because she was depressed. (@my opinion she did suicide not because of she was embarrassed, but because she worried she would be fired and could not get a job to survive her life with two daughters).

Everybody blames everybody, it is not clear who blame whom, but the Radio station beard the responsibility.

In Indonesia, there is one local radio which does the same thing.  The difference is that  the station will ask the participant, will they allow to publish the record to the audience or not. For me it was so creative, it was not easy to get any idea for pranks, the hosts must create some unique ideas to make people laugh and happy, not creating harm to other people. ~ don’t make pranks as the one of way for dying process…

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Joking is fine in Islam as long as not excessive, not frightening others, not  lying, not using bad words, not harassing any religion, and so forth. Rasulullah SAW said, “Verily I joked, but I did not say anything but the truth.” [Hadith narrated by ath-Thabrâni ]. In another hadith the Prophet pbuh said, “Woe to the person who speaks lies to make people laugh, woe to him, woe to him.” [Hadith narrated by Ahmad, Abu Dawud, at-Tirmidzi].

Wallahua’lam

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