2012: the year when it became okay to blame victims of sexual assault

At Caernarfon Crown Court earlier this month, a 49-year-old man was convicted of raping a teenage girl. Jailing the rapist, the judge told him: “She let herself down badly. She consumed far too much alcohol and took drugs, but she also had the misfortune of meeting you”.

It was the latest in a wave of examples of  victim-blaming, a phenomenon that Christina Diamandopoulos, of the Rape Crisis charity, describes as the “myth that women are responsible for men’s sexual behaviour. From this stems the idea that what a woman wears, says, where she goes, or what she does can make her responsible for the crime committed against her.” The problem is compounded by common misconceptions, such as the idea that all rapists are strangers, who attack in dark alleys at night. In fact, Ms Diamandopoulos says, “most rape is committed by partners, ex-partners and men who are known to the woman”.

In August, the MP George Galloway publicly dismissed allegations of rape and sexual assault against Julian Assange. The WikiLeaks founder, he said, was guilty simply of “bad sexual etiquette” when he began to have sex with a sleeping woman who had previously consented; his actions were “not rape as anyone with any sense can possibly recognise it”. The law clearly states otherwise.

After news emerged of the sexual abuse of young girls in Rochdale, one victim told Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour: “Quite a few people rang social services: school, the police … even my own dad … basically they told my mum and dad that I was a prostitute and it was a lifestyle choice. And because I was only six months off turning 16, they wasn’t [sic] going to do anything.”

In April, after the footballer Ched Evans was convicted of raping a woman who was too drunk to consent, his victim faced an appalling backlash of online abuse. Twitter users called her a “money-grabbing slut” and circulated her name so widely that she was forced to change her identity.

In America, the Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin has claimed that “legitimate rape” rarely causes pregnancy, saying that the female body has ways “to shut that thing down”. Considering this year’s rash of high-profile incidents, Ms Diamandopoulos says: “As we succeed in raising the issues of rape and abuse directed at women and girls, we are meeting a backlash of sexism.”

Holly Dustin, director of the End Violence Against Women Coalition, agrees: “While the law on rape and sexual consent is clear, some of our politicians and other leaders seem to have failed to notice the progress that’s been made.”

Meanwhile, this year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival made headlines for featuring a high number of jokes about rape and domestic violence. Such “jokes” are also endemic online.“We must wake up to the way that social media enables and magnifies abuse and harassment of women,” Ms Dustin says. The popular social news website Reddit has entire categories dedicated to “raping women”, “hot rape stories”, and “choke a bitch”. And an article on the student website UniLad in January said: “Eighty-five per cent of rape cases go unreported. That seems to be fairly good odds.”

Jacqui Hunt, of Equality Now, says: “We absorb messages from all around us every day, so what some might dismiss as harmless banter takes on a completely different quality when it forms part of a general culture of demeaning, pejorative and prejudicial reporting on women.”

In fact, these jokes and media slurs could even be having an impact on rape conviction rates. Alison Saunders, head of the Crown Prosecution Service, told The Guardian this year that widespread “myths and stereotypes” about rape victims may give jurors “preconceived ideas” that could affect their decisions in court. When victims were “demonised in the media”, she said, “you can see how juries would bring their preconceptions to bear”.

Worrying evidence suggests that victim-blaming attitudes may also be infiltrating the very institutions victims rely on for support and justice. In October. Ryan Coleman-Farrow, a former Metropolitan Police detective constable, was jailed for 16 months for a string of failings relating to rape cases, including falsely claiming that a rape victim had dropped charges.

In a revealing interview with The Independent, Brian Paddick, a former Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Met, said of his time as a serving officer: “There was a pervading male-dominated macho culture which was generally unhealthy, particularly when it came to issues of violence against women. In my evidence to [the Leveson Inrquiry] I talked about a review of rape investigations I did … We found significant differences for outcomes in rape cases in different parts of London, but we weren’t allowed to say that in the final report… The results were watered down, and I honestly believe that victims of rape in London had a poorer service from the police in consequence.

“I felt the police were not taking rape investigations seriously enough … I remember when, as a serving police officer, a more senior officer asked me to accept an officer on transfer against whom an allegation of rape was made. ‘They met at a dance and went home together and were playing strip poker, so she was asking for it really,’ he said. In another case, a woman was followed from a party into the women’s toilets and, as the woman tried to push the door closed, the man forced his way in and raped her. One of the investigating officers suggested to me: ‘Sounds like she left the door open deliberately.’ ”

It will not be easy to tackle such deeply ingrained ideas. “We need nothing short of a revolution in our approach to sexual violence,” Ms Dustin says. But although the attitudes revealed have been worrying, the fact that such stories have been so prevalent in the media this year is a sign of progress, she believes. “The scale of revelations about abuse of women and girls in the Jimmy Savile case may have begun to turn the tide.”

As awareness grows, says Ms Diamandopoulos: “We have to get together as women … to grow the seeds of the fightback, which has already started, with organisations such as Rape Crisis, Object, Everyday Sexism, Mumsnet and others. Together, women have moved mountains before – we can do it again.”

Outspoken and outdated in their own words

"Not everybody needs to be asked prior to each insertion... It might be really sordid and bad sexual etiquette, but  whatever else it is, it is not rape."

George Galloway, 58, the Respect MP for Bradford West, speaking in August about the case against the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. His comments led to the resignation of the Respect Party’s leader, Salma Yaqoob.

"If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."

The Republican Congressman Todd Akin, clarifying his views on abortion in cases of pregnancy arising from rape. He subsequently lost the Missouri Senate seat in November’s US elections.

"I think that sometimes, you know, us guys who are a bit older, who are, shall we say, tactile - which is not a terrible thing to be. In the old days, you put your arm around somebody and gave them a little kiss or a cuddle."

DJ Dave Lee Travis, 67, defending himself against allegations of sexual offences after being released on bail in November by police involved in the Jimmy Savile investigation.

"Money-grabbing little tramp."

A tweet by the Sheffield United footballer Connor Brown, after his team-mate Ched Evans, 23, was jailed for five years in April for raping a 19-year-old woman. The woman was named more than 6,000 times on Twitter and Facebook  – in a clear breach of her guaranteed anonymity as a rape victim.

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Christmas a time for bridge building

Treating Christmas with Respect

Christmas is an annual Christian religious holiday commemorating the birth of Prophet Jesus, peace be upon him. For many Muslims who do not even celebrate the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, it becomes an issue of what stand they should take.

There have been a number of legitimate criticisms of the holiday from Muslims and non-Muslims based on theological and cultural considerations. However, this cannot be used to disregard the holiday as merely an exercise in ancient pagan practices, for instance, or excessive consumerism. Muslims have to remember that for practicing Christians, Christmas really is about Jesus .

Prophet Muhammad , was so accommodating of Christians that according to the two earliest Islamic historians, Ibn e Saad and Ibn Hisham, the Prophet even allowed a delegation of 60 Byzantine Christians from Najran in Yemen to worship in his own mosque in Madinah. Lead by their bishop (Usquf), they had come to discuss a number of issues with him. When time of their prayer came, they asked the Prophet's permission to perform this in the mosque. He answered, "conduct your service here in the mosque. It is a place consecrated to God."

God expects us to stay away from mocking the religious beliefs of others, no matter how much we disagree with them. He says in the Quran: "And insult not those whom they (disbelievers) worship besides God, lest they insult God wrongfully without knowledge. Thus We have made fair-seeming to each people its own doings; then to their Lord is their return and He shall then inform them of all that they used to do" (Quran, 6:108).

We also have to remember that even if for many nominal Christians, the celebration is not really about participating in religious traditions, Christmas is a time for families to get together. In a number of cases it is the only time of year families get together, either because family members are scattered in different parts of the country or the world, because of communication and relationship problems, or because in America today, the family unit is becoming weaker and weaker.

 Christmas is a great time to relate to our neighbors. We should not forget though, that "relating" does not mean "preaching". Dawa cannot be made in a rude manner. Allah says in the Quran: "Invite (all) to the Way of your Lord with wisdom and beautiful advice, and reason with them by ways that are the best and most gracious: because your Lord knows best, (those) who have strayed from His Path, and those who receive guidance " (Quran, 16:125).

In particular, when dealing with Jews and Christians, Allah says: "Do not argue with the People of the Book unless it is in the politest manner, except for those of them who do wrong. Say: 'We believe in what has been sent down to us and what has been sent down to you. Our God and your God is [the same] One, and we are Muslims before Him'" (Quran, 29:46).

This may not be an occasion to emphasis the differences as much as the commonality of our beliefs, unless someone is really asking you about them.

A starting point for a discussion about Christmas could be the Islamic belief in all Books revealed by Allah and all Prophets sent by Him. In this discussion, special emphasis could be made on Prophet Jesus . Non-Muslims are often surprised to discover that Muslims also believe in this noble Prophet and his great mother Mary (peace be upon her).

Remember that respect does not mean compromise. This article is not asking you to compromise anything. You have freedom of religion given by God to believe in what you believe in. But in a world where conflict is increasing, a Muslim should be a bridge- builder and a peacemaker. It was due to the Muslim practice of Islamic ideals of respect and tolerance that the key of the holiest Christian Shrine in Jerusalem, the church of the Holy Sepulcher, remains entrusted with a Muslim family, as it has been for over 1400 years. 

These are the lessons which need to be learned by those extremists who attack Christians during their worship in Nigeria and those extremists who burn Masjids in the USA.
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Dawkins Is Wrong. Religion Is Rational

"You believe that Muhammad went to heaven on a winged horse?"” That was the question posed to me by none other than Richard Dawkins a few weeks ago, in front of a 400-strong audience at the Oxford Union. I was supposed to be interviewing him for al-Jazeera but the world’s best-known atheist decided to turn the tables on me.

So what did I do? I confessed. Yes, I believe in prophets and miracles. Oh, and I believe in God, too. Shame on me, eh? Faith, in the disdainful eyes of the atheist, is irredeemably irrational; to have faith, as Dawkins put it to me, is to have “"belief in something without evidence"”. This, however, is sheer nonsense. Are we seriously expected to believe that the likes of Descartes, Kierkegaard, Hegel, Rousseau, Leibniz and Locke were all unthinking or irrational idiots?

In trying to disparage “faith”, Dawkins and his allies constantly confuse “evidence” with “proof”; those of us who believe in God do so without proof but not without evidence. As the Oxford theologian (and biophysicist) Alister McGrath has observed: “"Our beliefs may be shown to be justifiable, without thereby demonstrating that they are proven.”"

The science bit

Those atheists who harangue us theists for our supposed lack of evidence should consider three things. First, it may be a tired cliché but it is nonetheless correct: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. I can'’t prove God but you can’t disprove him. The only non-faith-based position is that of the agnostic.

Second, there are plenty of things that cannot be scientifically tested or proven but that we believe to be true, reasonable, obvious even. Which of these four pretty uncontroversial statements is scientifically testable? 1) Your spouse loves you. 2) The Taj Mahal is beautiful. 3) There are conscious minds other than your own. 4) The Nazis were evil.

This isn’'t just about metaphysics, aesthetics or ethics: science itself is permeated with unproven (and unprovable) theories. Take the so-called multiverse hypothesis. "“It says there are billions and billions of universes, all of which have different settings of their fundamental constants,"” Dawkins explained to a member of the audience in Oxford. "“A tiny minority of those billions and billions of universes have their constants set in such a way as to give rise to a universe that lasts long enough to give rise to galaxies, stars, planets, chemistry and hence the process of evolution...”"

Hmm. A nice idea, but where'’s your evidence, Richard? How do we “prove” that these “billions and billions” of universes exist? “"The multiverse theory may be dressed up in scientific language,”" the cosmologist Paul Davies has admitted, "“but in essence it requires the same leap of faith [as God]."”

Third, there are plenty of good, rational and evidence-based arguments for God. You don'’t have to agree with them, but it is intellectually dishonest to claim that they, too, like God, don'’t exist.

Take the Kalam cosmological argument – first outlined by the medieval Muslim theologian al-Ghazali, and nowadays formulated by the Christian philosopher William Lane Craig as follows:

1) Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2) The universe began to exist.
3) Therefore, the universe has a cause.

Whether you agree with it or not, it is a valid deductive argument, a genuine appeal to reason and logic.

Or how about the argument that says the universe, in Davies'’s words, “is "in several respects ‘'fine-tuned'’ for life”"? Remember, the late Antony Flew, the atheist philosopher who embraced God in 2004, did so after coming to the conclusion that “there had to be "an intelligence behind the integrated complexity of the physical universe”". To pretend that Flew, of all people, arrived at such a belief blindly, without thinking it through, “without evidence”, is plain silly.

For Muslims such as me, faith (iman) and reason (aql) go hand in hand. The Quran stresses the importance of using science, logic and reason as tools for discovering God. "“Will you not then use your reason?”" it asks, again and again. But hasn'’t the theory of evolution undermined Islam? asks the atheist. A few years ago, Dawkins accused British Muslims of "“importing creationism into this country”". He has a point. These days, the vast majority of my coreligionists see Darwin as the devil.

Yet this is a new phenomenon. Many of Islamic history’'s greatest scholars and thinkers were evolutionists; the 19th-century scientist John William Draper, a contemporary of Darwin, referred to the latter’s views as "“the Muhammadan theory of evolution"”. As I pointed out on these pages back in January, “"one of the earliest theories of natural selection was developed by the ninth-century Iraqi zoologist (and Islamic theologian) al-Jahiz, 1,000 years before Charles Darwin"”. And almost 500 years before the publication of On the Origin of Species, the acclaimed Arab philosopher Ibn Khaldun wrote his Muqaddimah, in which he documented how “"the animal world then widens, its species become numerous . . . the higher stage of man is reached from the world of the monkeys...”"

Stages of man

There is, indeed, nothing in the Quran that prevents Muslims from embracing evolution. In his recent book Reading the Quran, the Muslim commentator Ziauddin Sardar notes how creation is presented "“as a dynamic, ongoing phenomenon that is constantly evolving and changing”". Sardar points to verse 14 of chapter 71, where “we are specifically asked to reflect on the fact that "‘He has created you stage by stage".

Yet the theory of evolution, whether Muslims accept it or not, doesn’'t explain the origins of the universe, the laws of science or our objective moral values. In short, most of us who believe in God do so not because we are irrational, incurious or immature but because He is the best answer to the question posed by Leibniz more than 300 years ago: “"Why is there something rather than nothing?”"

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Jesus Through a Muslim Lens

Jesus of Nazareth is the most widely revered religious figure in the world. Not only is he central to Christianity, the largest religion in the world, he is also venerated throughout Islam, the world's second largest faith.

Christians may be surprised to learn that Muslims believe in the Virgin Birth and Jesus' miracles. But this shared interest in his message goes much further.

In our scientific age, the miraculous side of Jesus' story has greatly obscured his role in the prophetic tradition. In this sense, there may be more important questions for Muslims and Christians than whether he walked on water or raised the dead.

In the Muslim view, Jesus' essential work was not to replicate magic bread or to test our credulity, but to complement the legalism of the Torah with a leavening compassion rarely expressed in the older testament. His actions and words introduce something new to monotheism: They develop the merciful spirit of God's nature. Jesus confirmed the Torah, stressing the continuity of his lineage, but he also developed the importance of compassion and self-purification as crucial links between learning the words of God's message and possessing the wisdom to carry it out.

Oddly enough, some of the recent work by New Testament scholars seems to have reached a view of Christ not all that different from Muslims'. For us and for these scholars, Jesus appears not as a literal son of God in human form, but as an inspired human being, a teacher of wisdom with a talent for love drawn from an unbroken relationship to God. Both versions present him as a man who spoke to common people in universal terms.

Two events in the life of the prophet Muhammad may help explain why Muslims revere the Christian Jesus.

The first event involves an elder resident of Mecca named Waraqa bin Nawfal. This man was an early Arab Christian and an uncle of Muhammad's wife, Khadija. We know he could read Hebrew, that he was mystical by nature, and that he attended Khadija and Muhammad's wedding in about 595 C.E. Fifteen years later, a worried Khadija sought Waraqa out and brought her husband to him.

At the time, Muhammad was a 40-year-old respected family man. He attended this "family therapy" session in a rare state of agitation. He was frightened. He had been meditating one evening in a cave on the outskirts of town. There, while half asleep, he had experienced something so disturbing that he feared he was possessed. A voice had spoken to him. 

Waraqa listened to his story, which Muslims will recognize as a description of Muhammad's first encounter with the angel Gabriel. When it was finished, Waraqa assured him he was not possessed. 

"What you have heard is the voice of the same spiritual messenger God sent to Moses. I wish I could be a young man when you become a prophet! I would like to be alive when your own people expel you." 

"Will they expel me?" Muhammad asked. 

"Yes," the old man said. "No one has ever brought his people the news you bring without meeting hostility. If I live to see the day, I will support you." 

Christians will recognize in Waraqa's remarks an aphorism associated with Jesus: "A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country." But that a Christian should first have verified Muhammad's role as a prophet may come as a surprise. 

The second important event concerning Islam and Christianity dates from 616, a few years after Muhammad began to preach publicly. This first attempt to reinstate the Abrahamic tradition in Mecca met (as Waraqa had warned) with violent opposition. 

Perhaps the Meccans resented Muhammad's special claim. Perhaps his message of a single, invisible, ever-present God threatened the economy of their city. A month's ride south from the centers of power in Syria and Persia, poor remote Mecca depended on long-distance trade and on seasonal pilgrims who came there each year to honor hundreds of pagan idols, paying a tax to do so. 

At any rate, Muhammad's disruptive suggestion that "God was One" and could be found anywhere did not sit well with the businessmen of Mecca. 

Many new Muslims were being tortured. Their livelihoods were threatened, their families persecuted. As matters grew worse, in 616 Muhammad sent a small band of followers across the Red Sea to seek shelter in the Christian kingdom of Axum. There, he told them, they would find a just ruler, the Negus, who could protect them. The Muslims found the Negus in his palace, somewhere in the borderland between modern Ethiopia and Eritrea. 

And protect them he did, after one Muslim recited to him some lines on the Virgin Mary from the Qur'an. The Negus wept at what he heard. Between Christians and Muslims, he said, he could not make out more difference than the thickness of a twig.

These two stories underscore the support Christians gave Muhammad in times of trial. The Qur'an distils the meaning from the drama:

Those who feel the most affection
For us (who put our faith in the Qur'an),
Are those that say, "We are Christians,"
For priests and monks live among them
Who are not arrogant. When they listen
To what We have shown Muhammad,
Their eyes brim over with tears
At the truth they find there....

Even today, when a Muslim mentions Jesus' name, you will hear it followed by the phrase "peace and blessings be upon him," because Muslims still revere him as a prophet.

We believe in God
And in what has been sent down to us,
What has been revealed to Abraham and Ishmael
And Isaac and Jacob and their offspring,
And what was given to Moses and to Jesus
And all the other prophets of the Lord.
We make no distinction among them.

 As these lines from the Qur'an make clear, Muslims regard Jesus as one of the world's great teachers. He and his mentor John the Baptist stand in a lineage stretching back to the founder of ethical monotheism. Moreover, among Muslims, Jesus is a special type of prophet, a messenger empowered to communicate divinity not only in words but by miracles as well.

Muslims, it must be said, part company with some Christians over the portrait of Jesus developed in the fourth and fifth centuries. Certain fictions, Muslims think, were added then. Three of these come in for special mention: First, Muslims consider monastic asceticism a latter-day innovation, not an original part of Jesus' way. Second, the New Testament suffers from deletions and embellishments added after Jesus' death by men who did not know him. Third, the description of Jesus as God's son is considered by Muslims a later, blasphemous suggestion. 

Muslims venerate Jesus as a divinely inspired human but never, ever as "the son of God." In the same vein, we treat the concept of the Trinity as a late footnote to Jesus' teachings, an unnecessary "mystery" introduced by the North African theologian Tertullian two centuries after Jesus' death. Nor do Muslims view his death as an act of atonement for mankind's sins. Rather, along with the early Christian theologian Pelagius, Islam rejects the doctrine of original sin, a notion argued into church doctrine by St. Augustine around the year 400. 

It might almost be said that Islam holds a view of Jesus similar to some of the early apostolic versions condemned by the fourth-century Byzantine Church. Once Constantine installed Christianity as the Roman Empire's state religion, a rage for orthodoxy followed. The Councils of Nicaea (325), Tyre (335), Constantinople (381), Ephesus (431), and Chalcedon (451) were official, often brutal attempts to stamp out heterodox views of Jesus held by "heretical" theologians. 

Rulings by these councils led to the persecution and deaths of tens of thousands of early Christians at the hands of more "orthodox" Christians who condemned them. Most disputes centered on divergent interpretations of the Trinity. For this reason, historians of religion sometimes see in these bloody divisions one of the root causes for early Islam's firmly unitarian outlook. 

Then and now, no more dangerous religious mistake exists for a Muslim than dividing the Oneness of God by twos or threes. 

Despite these important differences, however, the Qur'an repeatedly counsels Muslims not to dispute with other monotheists over matters of doctrine. People, it says, believe differently for good reasons. In fact, that is a part of Allah's will.

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I concur...:)

Ohio mosque arsonist says he was under influence of Fox News

 

An Indiana man convicted of setting fire to an Ohio mosque attributed his crime to the influence of Fox News, which he says convinced him that "most Muslims are terrorists."

 

Randolph Linn, 52, of St. Joe, Indiana pleaded guilty to arson for burning the Islamic Center of Greater Toledo. His plea will result in a 20-year prison term; prosecutors had sought a 40-year sentence.Linn told the court that on September 30 he had gotten "riled up" as a result of watching Fox News and drinking beer.

 

 Linn claims to have drank 45 beers in seven hours before heading to the mosque and setting a fire in the prayer room. He was also reportedly armed with a revolver at the time.During the court proceedings, Judge Jack Zouhary asked Linn if he knew any Muslims or knew what Islam was about."No, I only know what I hear on Fox news and what I hear on [right-wing talk] radio," Linn replied."Muslims are killing Americans and trying to blow stuff up," Linn told the judge. "Most Muslims are terrorists and don't believe in Jesus Christ," Linn falsely stated, ignorant of the fact that Jesus is revered as a prophet in Islam.

 

After he was arrested on October 2, Linn told officers, "Fuck those Muslims... they would kill us if they got the chance."Linn will be formally sentenced on April 16. A 2010 University of Maryland study found that Fox News viewers are the most ignorant on key issues. And another study conducted by Fairleigh Dickinson University determined that Fox News viewers know less than people who watch no news at all.

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Is Music permitted?

This is a great question.

Ever since I put up that Maher Zain poster a few days ago, my question inbox has been hit hard with people trying to start a discussion about how music is impermissible. This is the first problem with the issue; that people are so quick to throw labels around and bang the gavel. 

We have to understand something very important, before we even begin to discuss music: tossing the label of haram around is something that has serious spiritual ramifications. Allah [swt] addresses this issue in Surat At Tahreem 66:1 “Oh Prophet, why do you prohibit what Allah has made lawful for you?” Prohibiting something that is permissible is a serious sin, and should be avoided. Also, allowing something that is a clear sin is also a major sin, and should definitely be avoided. It’s best to leave the legal conclusions up to qualified scholarship, not Google.

Now that we’ve covered that, music is a very encompassing discussion - kind of like food. Generally, food is halal, but there are certain kinds of food (and drink) that are impermissible. Meat that is haram, pork, alcohol, etc. Music carries a similar analogy, in the sense that it is generally permissible, but there are lots of artists and songs that are definitely impermissible. The issue with the “music is halal” rulings is that people take it and run away quickly, loading up their iPhones with songs instructing people how to get low to the floor, how to work it, shake it, asking whether or not you like it, and something to do with birthday cake. The legal rulings discussing the permissibility of music will not cover for those kinds of artists/albums/songs.

In general, wholesome music that is thought-provoking, reminds you of goodness, Divine presence, the wonder of humanity, etc. it’s what is covered in the legal rulings discussing the permissibility of music. If you’re going to listen to music, listen to music which influences you toward goodness.

Now, the response that people will send me is a hadith that is quoted like this:

the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said, ‘From among my followers there will be some people who will consider illegal sexual intercourse, the wearing of silk (clothes), the drinking of alcoholic drinks and the use of musical instruments, as lawful.’

Shaykh Yusuf Qaradawi addresses using this hadith as a proof:

Although this hadith is in Sahih Al-Bukhari, its chain of transmission is not connected to Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) and this invalidates its authenticity. Ibn Hazm rejects it for that very reason. Moreover, the sub-narrator, Hisham Ibn `Ammar is declared ‘weak’ by many scholars of the Science of Hadith Methodology.

Besides, this hadith does not clearly prohibit the use of musical instruments, for the phrase ‘consider as lawful,’ according to Ibn Al-`Arabi, has two distinct meanings:

First : Such people think all these (the things mentioned) are lawful.

Second : They exceed the proper limits that should be observed in using these instruments. If the first meaning is intended, such people would be thus disbelievers. 

I’ve heard the argument that “Quran should be your music,” and I find this thought process extremely problematic. Yes, there is absolutely nothing better to listen to than the Quran. Nothing. But re-read that statement carefully. Quran is meant to be listened to, not just heard. Quran shouldn’t become background music, something that is there just to fill the empty silence of a room. If you’re going to listen to Quran, then we need to listen to it and reflect on what is being said. It can’t be just left on like a TV while doing chores.

So. Is music halal? The studies and discussions that I’ve done and had with my teachers convinces me of the opinion that yes - certain kinds of music are halal - but the answer to that question is research and a decision you’ll have to make (along with guidance from scholars you trust). Along with teaching people that certain types of music are halal, we must also teach self-accountability and responsibility in choosing music that is healthy for the soul, and not music that influences or warps the heart into a hyperemotional, sexualized, depressed lump of flesh. Rather, listen to things that spark remembrance of Allah, of His creation, His graces, and all things that lead back to Him.

Also, if you feel that music is halal (after researching the issue), then don’t make those who abstain from it completely feel like they’re losers or lame. That’s their personal level oftaqwa, and they’re abstaining from it for reasons that are known to them, reasons that help them get closer to Allah. Ask yourself, though, “what songs are on my playlists?” and “what do these songs do to my emotions, my worldview, my mind?”

The Prophet, peace be upon him, said: “Consult your heart. Righteousness is that about which the soul feels tranquil and the heart feels tranquil, and wrongdoing is that which wavers in the soul and causes disturbance in the breast even though people again and again have given you their legal opinion.”

If you choose not to listen to music, to abstain from it, don’t cause an issue with people who are accepting of the legal rulings permitting certain types of wholesome music, including instruments.

Live and let live.

And Allah knows best.

arm

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