On Buying or Playing with Dolls
Shaykh Muḥammad Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Albānī
Categorized under: Allowed vs. Not Allowed, Explanations, Family, Fatāwá and Rulings, Games and Pastimes, Goals, Prohibitions
Shaikh Muḥammad Naṣir Al-Dīn Al-Albānī, may Allāh have mercy on him, said:
No doubt I have mentioned this more than once: toys that are Islamically permissible for girls, those that base their [permissibility] on the ḥadīth of ʿĀʾishah mentioned earlier,¹ are only homemade toys, meaning those made at home from rags and cloth. They are not these toys that come from Western countries in various shapes and colors, as you have heard earlier.
At times, I’ve seen a little girl carrying an idol taller than the girl herself because it is made of lightweight plastic. These are idols, and this is not permissible. These are not the toys that the Messenger ﷺ allowed Sayyidah ʿĀʾishah [to play with].
In allowing toys for girls [such as those ʿĀʾishah played with], there’s something of what is today called “home economics”—training girls in skills related to cutting out clothes, sewing, attaching buttons, and the like of that. This is the [real] goal, not just messing around [or] decorating our homes with the like of these idols that have come to us from non-Muslim countries.
The toys [we should be raising our daughters upon] are those that come out of the home: the mother, the sister, a woman. Then the mother makes something of these toys for [her] little girls so they can train in the skills we referred to earlier.
An additional point is that non-Muslims export their customs, traditions, morals and character to us by way of these toys. For example, in many cases, you find that a doll or girl’s toy has hair cut short to here like a boy, so young girls are influenced by that from an early age and [end up] wanting to look like these toys that they had grown up playing with.
A [doll] might come from Europe with a girl dressed in a miniskirt, instead of a long dress that covers the calves [as should be the case]. This is how these toys come with corrupting influences that we fight against day and night, but then we ourselves bring the like of these games or toys into our Muslim homes claiming they’re “[Islamically] permissible toys.”
These aren’t the toys that are allowed—only those toys originate from our own [Muslim] customs, traditions, and homes.
¹Narrated by Al-Bukhārī (TR)
Source: Fatāwá Jeddah, tape 2, from 00:00:33.