This is a Sufi Story about a Fool or who was considered to be a fool because he didn’t fit to the society’s definition of normality. Since he was not like the normal people, people considered him a fool. Please read the below Sufi Story and know what wisdom this fool holds and decide for yourself if he was actually a fool or other people were fools.

A king was seriously thinking of turning the whole country moral. Nobody should be allowed to say anything untrue. Untruths should be banned. The wise men all agreed; in fact, because these wise people were his servants, they were even going further than him, exaggerating. One wise man suggested that of course this was the right thing to be done – untruths should be banned – and one who was found to be saying some untruth should be immediately sentenced to death. He should be hanged in the marketplace so that everybody would know what the cost of saying anything untrue would be.

Sufi Story of a Wise Fool

The fool was listening. He said, ‘Okay. Then tomorrow morning I will see you all at the gate.’

They said, ‘What do you mean?’

He said, ‘At the gate.’

And he said to the king, ‘Keep the gallows ready because I am going to say an untruth.’

The king said, ‘Have you gone mad?’

And he replied, ‘I have always been mad: But I will see you all, the whole court, at the gate – and keep the gallows ready. I will be the first person to be hanged.’

It was a challenge. The gallows were made ready and the next morning, when they opened the gate of the town, the fool entered on his donkey.

The king asked, ‘Where are you going, you fool?’ He was very angry because they had had to get up early in the morning to get there.

And the fool said, ‘I am going to the gallows.’

Now he created a problem. If you killed him he had said a truth, if you didn’t kill him he had told a lie. He said, ‘I am going to the gallows. Prepare them. I am going to die on the gallows.’ All these wise men and the king were puzzled. What to do with this man? He was telling a lie. If you kill him the lie becomes a truth. If you don’t kill him the lie goes unpunished.

And the fool laughed. He said, ‘You are all fools. Who can ban untruth and who can ban immorality? Everything is needed in proportion.’

Each great king used to have a fool because wise people tend to go to the extreme. And to go to the extreme is a sort of foolishness. To keep a balance one should sometimes forget all about dignity, one should sometimes bend in company, laugh like a fool, be like a child – be human.

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