Islam is a religion that hates lying because it leads to corruption and then to fire, and God loves truthfulness. God the Exalted hates the liar in this world with a severe and painful punishment. Therefore, God has revealed many noble verses that detest lying and urge truthfulness, as His statement, the Exalted: “Indeed, God does not guide the treacherous deceiver” (Surah Al-Mu’min, verse 28).
Here is a collection of stories between truth and lying, and what happens to those who lie. For God, the Exalted, is just in His judgment, guiding the truthful and hating the deceivers, and seeing their deeds.
The First Story: The Truthful King It is told that in a distant country lived a tyrant who was ruling over his people in oppression and cruelty. He would inflict on them the most apparent evils and harm them without pity or mercy. The people were accustomed to this miserable life, but when a noble man came and stayed in the city, they realized his justice and what he did. So they turned against the tyrant until they removed his power and deposed him for what he did to them to obtain money and authority for himself.
The tyrant heard about that stranger who was trying to win the people and incite them against him. So the commander sent with his might and attacked him, and then killed him so he would become a severe lesson and deterrent for all the people of the kingdom, and whoever planned for himself something similar to the tyrant’s wickedness. And indeed, the commander began to search the kingdom for that stranger, but when he heard that, he fled from them.
While he was walking in his way, searching for a place to hide, a man passed by him, a wolf. The man said to him, “O uncle, help me with your cunning because the commander of the king wants to kill me.” The wolf said to him, “Hide here, my son, under this great tree. The cunning of the stranger will not find you because the place is hidden, and the commander will drown in his time until they discover his presence there.”
But he listened to the stranger’s news because they were close to the fox’s news. While he was hiding under the tree, he heard the king’s commander’s voice and their people talking with the old wolf, saying to him, “O you, this man, tell us if you have seen a strange man running from here now?” The wolf said, “Yes, I saw him,” so the commander asked him about the location of his presence.
The wolf said to them, “He is under this tree, for the commander knows that the wolf is cunning among them and left them to pursue him, and they will search for the man in another place.” Then the wolf came out of his hiding and was in great shock of what the wolf had done, wondering how he deceived him about his presence location, and then he easily hid his presence. The wolf said to him, “My son, if lying would succeed, the truth would fail.”
The Second Story: Happily Truthful It is told that two men, one named Jaber and the other named Mina, were traveling in the desert. They walked for a very long time until they found a mosque at the edges. They stopped there to ask for water and food. Jaber said, “Tell them my name is Muhammad so they will offer me whatever I want of food and drink.” But Mina refused and said, “I will tell them my real name Mina, but it will not be.”
The two men reached the mosque. The old sheikh welcomed them and asked their names and their directions. Jaber said, “I am named Muhammad.” Mina said, “And I am named Mina. We are from the desert and need some food and drink to satiate our hunger.” The old sheikh Muslim listened and ordered food for Mina, then looked at Muhammad and said to him, “Go away, O Muhammad. You are standing in our presence in the city of Ramadi, the vile.”
The Third Story: The Lying Bird On a tree of one of the cypress trees lived a small bird in the nest with his parents. Every day, they would go out to search for food to feed their small chick. They would keep him in the nest until he grew. The mother would warn her small chick every day not to leave the nest lest something happened to him from a bird or a snake. One day, the small bird thought and said to himself, “My parents leave outside the nest for long times. Why do I not go out, play, and return to the nest without them noticing?”
Indeed, the small bird went out to play. When his mother returned and asked him, “Did you go out today, O bird?” the bird lied and said, “No, I never went out, for I kept the small one.” The two parents worried about their small bird. On the next day, the bird went out again, searching for some amusement and play, without telling his mother about that. While he was playing, a strange animal approached, trying to eat him. The bird cried and shouted in a loud voice. The birds around him gathered and tried to help him. Some birds left to inform his mother, but they did not believe the birds’ speech because they knew their son never left the nest and never lied at all. When the two large birds returned to the nest, they found their small chick running. They were astonished at that and realized that the birds had not been lying, but their small chick, the bird, was the one who had been lying.
The mother bird said, “Look what happened to you because of your lying, O bird. If you had told us the truth, that accident would not have happened to you. It teaches you that you must learn and not lie, for the truth always succeeds, while lying leads to destruction and loss.