What is the philosophy behind the prohibition of telling “Lie”?
Telling lie in Islam is forbidden and prohibited in almost everywhere.
Our 11th Imam, Imam Hasan As’kari peace be upon him said:
“All of the evil things are put in a house and the key of that house is telling lie.”
This likening shows the evilness of the lie.
Imam Sadiq peace be upon him said:
“Telling lie causes the faith to be damaged.”
Telling lie has different motives; like greed, enmity, envy, gaining material benefits etc. but the main factor of that is the weakness and infirmity of the liar.
It is obvious that when someone tells a lie, usually he/she has done something fault before that and now he/she wants to tell lie, in order, not to be blamed by others. And you know sometimes this person has to tell several lies, one after the other and a lot of times the second lie is bigger that the first one and so on and he/she has to be under the pressure or fear of his/her lies from being revealed.
If telling lie spreads in the society, no one trusts others easily, because the possibility of a word of being unreal is there in every saying.
Many times telling lie causes hypocrisy, disunity, ruining the face of others, conflict etc.
Of course there are some exceptions from the Hormah(prohibition) of telling lie, but they are not everywhere, and it is just in a few cases that telling lie has very important Maslihah or very great benefit like preventing someone from being killed. Some people say that every time that telling lie has benefit for us, we are allowed to tell it, but we say as the answer to this wrong thought: almost every time telling lie has some benefits for the liars and as we said the formula of the exception is whenever the benefit of telling lie is so much greater than the ugliness of lie.
It is interesting that even in the cases that are known as the exceptions from the prohibition of telling lie, we are advised not to tell lie, and that means to utter the lie words, but in our minds at the time of uttering those words, we mean something else from them which is true, and this shows the importance of telling the truth and avoiding from telling lie.
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Source:
Porseman.org
