Legal Status and Social Impacts of Propagating Fake News: An Appraisal of Qur’anic Teachings and Prophetic Traditions

Abstract

With the development of means of communication, world has become global village. Human beings witnessed the knowledge explosion at global level. Information regarding almost every walk and issue of life is now a single click away. The accessibility has potential of both authentic and unauthentic information and knowledge in terms of sources and contents. Youngsters are the asset of every nation. They can be engaged both in positive, productive, and inclusive activities as well as confronted with each other based on negative, unauthentic and exclusivist way of news that eventually leads to social disorder and anarchy. Being a religion of nature, Islam suggest such practical, feasible and rational measures to be easily adopted in routine social life for building and sustaining the relationships based on friendship, fraternity, cooperation, diversity, and inclusivism. The golden principles mentioned in the holy Qur’an and demonstrated in the Prophetic traditions guarantee such a social life in which everyone is engaged in a positive, productive, inclusive, and vibrant relationship and consequently an exemplary human society emerges. The paper is an attempt to explore and highlight the Qur’anic teachings and Prophetic traditions about the need, importance, and value of propagating authentic and reality-based news and knowledge and recommend ways of promoting those Qur’anic teachings and Prophetic traditions to be conveniently applied in contemporary society in Pakistan especially in the circles of youngsters.