Not wrong to relate names of objects of worship
Fatwa No: 281785

Question

salaam aleikoum ustad,One guy on tv was saying that that is a god and for other cultures Allah and he said the dirty names buda and krisna and the kaafir even said that for some people singers are their god and named some names.This got me excited and i directly said 'your mother!' because your mother is a kind of cursing in my country. So i cursed the person on tv with his mother because i hated that he called those tawaaghit names and doing shirk because there is only one god and that is Allah soebhannahoe wa ta3ala.Do you think i was wrong? And secondly how can we stay calm and not curse because it does a lot of pain hearing this injustice of shirk being done to Allah?

Answer

All perfect praise be to Allaah, The Lord of the Worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allaah, and that Muhammad, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, is His slave and Messenger.

You did not clarify to us the nature of what the speaker said about the matter. In any case, the mere mention of gods as objects of worship is not Islamically dispraised, but it has different effects depending on the situation. Reporting disbelief is not always dispraised. In fact, Allaah has related to us the statements of the polytheists and their actions. What then can be said about someone only mentioning the names of objects of worship?

Ibn Taymiyyah said: "‘Iyaadh the Qhaadi said earlier that if someone says an insult, reporting it from someone else, and tracing it back to him, for such a one, his report and the context of his statement should be investigated, and the judgment varies due to that in four ways: being obligatory, recommended, disliked or forbidden. Then, he (Iyaadh) said some of such things can be interpreted as a testimony or the like, which involves the presenting of revealed evidence against the speaker, or as a detraction from the speaker, in contrast to one saying it for something besides these two. Again he said no one has the right to joke about the honor of the Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alahyhi wa sallam, or to let ill speech about him pass through his mouth, neither by mention nor by report, without a permissible legitimate purpose." [End of quote]

Even if he mentioned that in an unlawful manner, it does not make what you did permissible. Being obscene and insulting are not among the morals of a Muslim as in the Hadeeth which reads: "A believer is not one who curses or insults and neither is he vulgar and obscene." [Ahmad and At-Tirmithi - Al-Albaani classified it as Saheeh (sound)]

Besides, ‘Aa’ishah narrated: "A group of Jews came to the Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, and said: as-saamu ‘alaykum (which means: death be unto you). I understood it and I said to them: and unto you, and the curse of Allaah and His wrath be upon you. The Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, said: 'O ‘Aa’ishah, be calm, and don’t be aggressive or obscene.'" [Al-Bukhari and Muslim]

How much worse then is insulting the mother of the speaker who has nothing to do with what her son said! This is Islamically objectionable, so you should seek forgiveness for what you said.

Anger for the Sake of Allaah – for example anger over Shirk – is commendable in principle. Al-Bukhari entitled a chapter "On what is permissible in terms of anger and harshness for the Sake of Allaah". He stated in it: Allaah says (what means): {…fight against the disbelievers and the hypocrites and be harsh upon them.} [Quran 9:73] He also cited the following Hadeeth in it among others: ‘Aa’ishah said: "The Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, entered my quarters and there was a curtain with images (of animals) in the house. His face turned red with anger, and then he got hold of the curtain and ripped it apart." Also, Abu Mas‘ood related that a man came to the Prophet, sallallaahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, and said: "I keep away from the morning prayer only because such a person prolongs the prayer when he leads us in it." The narrator added: “I had never seen Allaah's Messenger become more furious in giving advice than he was on that day."

However, just because a believer gets angry for Allaah's Sake does not mean that he should exceed the bounds of what is permissible, such as by condemning something that is not wrong or by insulting others. Please refer to Fatwa 87671.

For more benefit on how to control one's anger, please refer to Fatwa 88764.

Allaah Knows best.

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