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Is it permissible to narrate fictional stories to children featuring real characters, such as "your neighbor's son did such-and-such" or "your brother did such-and-such," even though these events did not occur, for the purpose of entertainment?

1 min readAlso available in العربية

Fictional stories are permissible if they are for the purpose of parables, admonitions, or teaching courage and the like, not for outright lying, such as the tales featuring Al-Harith ibn Hammam and Al-Saruji in Al-Hariri's Maqamat. Among the permissible fictional stories are those whose falsehood is not certain, intended for entertainment. However, stories in which fabricated actions are attributed to real people, this is a forbidden lie, and it has educational harms.

Summarized from the full answer at Ftawy · reviewed Sep 2, 2026

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