Global InformationIslam and music information
The relationship between Islam and music has long been a complex and controversial matter.[1][2][3][4][5] Many Muslims believe that the Qur'an and Sunnah prohibit music (instruments and singing);[6] however, other Muslims disagree and believe that some forms of music are permitted.[2][7][8] Despite this controversy, music has been popular and flourished at various times and places in the Islamic world, often in palaces and private homes to avoid censorship.[9]
In many parts of the Muslim world devotional/religious music and secular music is well developed and popular. In recent decades, "the advent of a whole new generation of Muslim musicians who try to blend their work and faith", has given the issue "extra significance".[10]
Historically, Islamic art and music flourished during the Islamic Golden Age.[11][12][13] Islamic music is also credited with influencing European and Western music; for example, French musicologist Baron Rodolphe d'Erlanger in his assessment of the Abbasid Caliphate in Islamic history credits Abu Nasr Muhammad al-Farabi's Kitabu l'musiqi al-kabir ("The Great Book of Music") with this influence.[14]
- ^ Reynolds, Dwight F. (April 2015). The Cambridge Companion to Modern Arab Culture. Cambridge University Press. p. 140. doi:10.1017/CCO9781139021708.010. ISBN 978-0-521-89807-2.
Besides celebrating the past tradition of slave girls who were bought and sold on the basis of the beauty of their voices and the depth of their song repertoire, the song also brings to the fore contentious issues concerning the permissibility of music in Muslim society. Since the birth of Islam, many have considered music to be an unacceptable distraction from a proper religious life: music, they declare, is haram (unlawful, impermissible). Others, however, have celebrated music's ability to foster aesthetic pleasure, communal celebration, and even, if properly employed, a means of achieving union with the Almighty here and now, the latter a belief of Sufi mystics. In Ghanni li shwayya, music is unabashedly celebrated, lauded for its ability to affect nature, cure illness, soothe the heart, and bring girls to dance.
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Salhi, Kamal (December 2013). Music, Culture and Identity in the Muslim World: Performance, Politics and Piety. Routledge. p. 5. ISBN 978-1-317-96310-3.
The attitude toward music [in the Muslim world] has always been ambivalent, as expressed in a series of contradictory feelings and concepts: predilection and mistrust; divine-devilish; exalting-disruptive; admissible-prohibited' (Shiloah nd). Views about the admissibility of music, or the art of sound, in the Muslim world, range from complete negation to complete acceptance, even of dance and other bodily expressions.
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Sumarsam (2011). "Past and Present Issues of Islam within the Central Javanese Gamelan and Wayang Kulit". In Harnish, David D.; Rasmussen, Anne K. (eds.). Divine Inspirations: Music and Islam in Indonesia. Oxford University Press. pp. 45–79. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195385410.003.0002. ISBN 978-0-19-538542-7.
The consideration of religious singing and instrumental music in the context of Islam is fraught with complexity and ambiguity (Neubauer & Doubleday 2001/12, 599)
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Rasmussen, Anne (August 2010). Women, the Recited Qur'an, and Islamic Music in Indonesia. University of California Press. p. 170. ISBN 978-0-520-25549-4.
Much has been written about the permissibility of music in Islamic contexts, particularly among scholars of Arab music, for whom the topic seems to be re- quired (see, for example, al-Faruqi 1985, 1986; Nasr 2000; Nelson 1985; Racy 1984; Rasmussen 2008; Frishkopf 1999; Sawa 1985, 1989; Farmer 1985; Otterbeck n.d.; and Danielson and Fisher 2002). The eminent musicologist Amnon Shiloah describes the "interminable" debate regarding the permissibility of music as already apparent during the first centuries of Islam in the Arabian Peninsula: "In all the major centers of Islam extending from India, Indonesia and Central Asia to Africa, legalists, theologians, spiritual leaders, urban custodians of morality, the literati and leaders of mystic confraternities, all took part in this debate which elicited views that vary from complete negation to full admittance of all musical forms and means including the controversial dance. Between the two extremes, one can find all possible nuances."(Shiloah 1997, 144)
- This quote from Shiloah is also quoted (a bit more fully) in: Østebø, Terje (December 2021). Routledge Handbook of Islam in Africa. Routledge. p. 358. ISBN 978-1-000-47172-4.
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Shiloah, Amnon (1995). Music in the World of Islam: A Socio-cultural Study. Wayne State University Press. p. 60. ISBN 978-0-8143-2970-2.
In sum, the attitude toward music has always been ambivalent, as expressed in a series of contradictory feelings and concepts: predilection and mistrust; divine-devilish; exalting-disruptive; admissible-prohibited.
- ^ Harris, Diana (2006). Music Education and Muslims. Trentham Books. p. 10. ISBN 978-1-85856-356-5.
Raza (1991, p60) wrote 'the community misinterprets Islam according to their needs, and there are many passages in the hadith which descry music. Those often quoted include : ' Singing sprouts hypocrisy in the heart as rain sprouts plants' (al Baihaqi, in Lambat, 1998) ; 'Musical instruments are amongst the most powerful means by which the devil seduces human beings' (Farmer, 1973, p. 24-5). Probably the most important is a hadith narrated by al - Bukhari in which the Prophet (p.b.u.h.) is reported as saying that at some future time there will be people from my umma (the Muslim community) who will seek to make lawful fornication, the wearing of silk by men, wine drinking and the use of musical instruments.
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Baker, Raymond William (June 2009). Islam Without Fear: Egypt and the New Islamists. Harvard University Press. p. 63. ISBN 978-0-674-02045-0.
Ghazzaly also clarified the essential premise of New Islamist thinking that saw the arts as one among many powerful instruments given to Man by God... Ghazzaly rejected the idea put forward by the amirs that singing is haram, and in particular he objected strongly to the further notion advanced by many Islamists, both conservative and extremist, that a woman's voice is haram and should not be heard. On the other hand, Ghazzaly also refused to countenance the secularists' view that all lyrics set to music were appropriate for an Islamic society...
- ^ Cook, Michael (January 2001). Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-139-43160-6.
An early statement of the contrary view, that music is permitted, is found in Mufaddal ibn Salama fi. later third/ninth century)
- ^ van Nieuwkerk, Karin (1998). "'"An Hour for God and an Hour for the Heart": Islam, Gender and Female Entertainment in Egypt'". Journal of Musical Anthropology of the Mediterranean. 3. ISSN 1825-621X.
Since the birth of Islam the permissibility of music and singing has been debated. Not only the lawfulness of the performer but also of the audience was discussed. Advocates and opponents alike traced the legitimacy of their position back to the Quran and the hadiths, the sayings of the Prophet. As in present day Egypt, these debates on the lawfulness of music did not prevent the art from flourishing in palaces and private homes (Sawa 1989; Stigelbauer 1975).
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
IT-21-7-2006was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Bhattacharyya, Prasanta; Ghosh, Tapan Kumar (14 December 2016). Mapping out the Rushdie Republic: Some Recent Surveys. ISBN 9781443855624.
- ^ Bohlman, Philip V. (June 2013). Revival and Reconciliation: Sacred Music in the Making of European Modernity. Scarecrow Press. pp. 12–14. ISBN 978-0-8108-8269-0.
- ^ LIFE Aladdin. 24 May 2019. ISBN 9781547849031.
- ^ Bohlman, Philip V.; Werkman, Mary (June 7, 2013). Revival and Reconciliation: Sacred Music in the Making of European Modernity. Scarecrow Press, Chicago. ISBN 978-0-8108-8269-0 – via Google Books.