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Committing forbidden acts so as to entertain the audience

Question

There is a show where 4 friends do tasks and dare each other to do things and there is a punishment at the end for the person who gets the most fails from the tasks. For example, one person might get asked, by the other 3 people, to swear at a member of the public. If the person chooses to not do this task he will get a fail and the person who gets the most fails must do the punishment at the end of the show. Most of the time the tasks will involve haraam deeds, so is there any shirk/kufr involved, because the people are essentially doing bad deeds and embarrassing themselves to avoid having to do the punishment at the end, to entertain viewers?

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.

Undoubtedly, such a blameworthy act combines a set of prohibited acts and wrongdoings such as: committing misdeeds publicly, engaging in forbidden betting, and taking those sinful acts as a means of entertaining people and making them laugh which results in the development of a sense of indifference towards sins and wrongdoings. Verily, such indifference renders these misdeeds even graver.

However, this does not entail labeling the doers of such misdeeds as disbelievers. Ahlus-Sunnah Wal-Jamaa‘ah do not label any Muslim as a disbeliever on account of committing sins and misdeeds that are not considered Shirk. An-Nawawi  may  Allaah  have  mercy  upon  him wrote, “People of the truth (reliable scholars) unanimously agreed that Zina (unlawful sexual intercourse), theft, murder, and other grave major sins, apart from Shirk, do not renders their doers disbelievers. Rather, they are believers, but their faith is incomplete. If they repent from their sins, they are exempted of the due punishment. However, if they die while being persistent in committing such grave sins, they are subjected to the Will of Allaah. He may forgive them and admit them to Paradise or He may punish them for a period of time and then admit them to Paradise.” [Sharh Muslim]

For more benefit, please refer to Fatwa 91110.

Allaah Knows best.

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