2 Islamic articles on: anime in Islam

Table of contents for the topic anime in Islam
  1. Should Muslims just stay away from manga and anime?
  2. The Islamic ruling on watching gay anime

IslamQA: Should Muslims just stay away from manga and anime?

Everyone should just stay away from manga and anime. So much, if not absolutely most of it is immoral filth. Juvenile stories told with immoral themes and aimed at teenagers. Fantranslations make the stories impossible to regulate and many children are subjected to stories they should never have seen, let alone anyone of any age should see. They are not only ugly in appearance and telling, but ugly in their morals and intent. I pray that the whole phenomenon dies away insha'Allah.

I have no interest in them myself but I think that if Muslims get invovled with the genre and contribute wholesome alternatives to it, then it can be reformed. For example I grew up watching Arabic-dubbed anime on the popular SpaceToon channel and there was nothing in that except good moral teachings, besides the entertainment and fantasy.

If just leave the genre alone then that would just increase the chances of our teenagers going to the unwholesome versions of it. So I believe the first step toward a solution would be an English-language alternative to SpaceToon that only presents the wholesome animes.


IslamQA: The Islamic ruling on watching gay anime

You can decide for yourself when something is spiritually bad by these criteria:

  • It causes doubt in your heart
  • You do not want the people you respect the most to know you are doing it
  • When you feel very spiritual (for example if it is Ramadan and you have been reading a lot of Quran) you want to avoid that thing.

The ideal Muslim is the one whose private life and public life are the same so that there is nothing secret in their lives that they would not want others to find out about.

As for your specific question, if the anime has erotic elements, then that is forbidden to watch (as discussed here).

If it is not erotic, homosexual relationships are still obscene (fāḥish) and the Quran says:

and do not come near obscenities, whether outward or inward... (from the Quran, verse 6:151)

Watching a show that celebrates homosexuality is a way of “going near obscenities” which the above verse strongly discourages. Therefore the admirable and pious thing to do is to avoid such shows.