—precisely because of the knowledge they embody, and because such mockery constitutes unbelief even when one does not mean earnest derision. The very people to whom the verses were revealed came admitting what they had said and pleading, “We were only indulging in idle talk and play,” that is, we did not intend mockery or denial, we were merely joking rather than speaking in earnest. Yet Allah, through His Messenger ﷺ, informed them that this excuse could not save them from Him, that by this very statement they had slipped into disbelief after having believed, and that their claim of having spoken in jest would not be accepted. The Prophet ﷺ responded with nothing more than the recitation of Allah’s words: “Was it at Allah, His revelations, and His Messenger that you were mocking? Make no excuse; you have lapsed into disbelief after having believed.” ⦗1⦘ Matters of this sort admit no levity or play; they must be held in reverence and esteem, and one’s heart should humble itself before Allah’s verses out of faith in Allah and His Messenger and out of veneration for His revelations. Anyone who treats them flippantly thereby disparages them.

Shaykh Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (may Allah have mercy on him) said: “An explicit statement of mockery is what we have just mentioned and anything like it. As for explicit acts of mockery, they include pursing the lips, sticking out the tongue, making gestures, and the like—things many people do when they are told to perform the prayer or give zakah; then what of the matter of tawḥīd itself?!” End quote.

The same ruling applies to ridiculing any sound sunnah of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ: for example, mocking the practice of letting the beard grow while trimming the moustache, belittling the use of the siwāk, and other such practices, as well as deriding the duty to enjoin right and forbid wrong.

Ibn Isḥāq narrates: “A band of hypocrites—including Wadiʿah ibn Thābit, a kinsman of Banū Umayyah ibn Zayd of ʿAmr ibn ʿAwf, and a man from Ashjaʿ aligned with Banū Salamah named Mukhshī ibn Ḥumayr—were pointing at the Messenger of Allah ﷺ as he departed for Tabūk. One of them said to the rest, ‘Do you really think we can stand up to the warriors of Banū al-Aṣfar as though it were merely Arabs fighting one another?!’”