Jupiter drops (some context).
It is told to us by a long and unbroken isnaad of men of good character, known for their memories and their precision, that the Prophet (may the blessing and peace of Allah be upon him) has said: “There will certainly be those among my ummah who will allow fornication and silk, wine, the playing of musical instruments. Some of these people will stay at the side of the mountain and they will keep flocks of sheep. When a beggar comes in the evening to seek alms of them, they will say to him, ‘Come back to us tomorrow.’ And during the night, Allah will let the mountain fall down upon them, and others he will transform to apes and swine. They will remain as such until the Day of Resurrection.” —This is found to be neither odd nor faulty.
The fact that listeners hear the same emotion in a given musical score is something a Neanderthal crooner might have exploited. Music can manipulate people’s emotional states (think of liturgical music, martial music or workplace music). Happy people are more cooperative and creative. By fostering cooperation and creativity among bands of early, prelanguage human ancestors, music would have given them a survival edge. “If you can manipulate other people’s emotions,” says Prof. Mithen, “you have an advantage.”
—Sharon Begley, “Caveman crooners may have aided early human life”
Early in the twentieth century, however, the new science of industrial efficiency management was electrified by the discovery made at an indoor bicycle race held in 1911 at the old Madison Square Garden in New York. A brass band was part of the entertainment, and statisticians clocking the race discovered that cyclists’ average speeds shot up by about ten percent during the band’s sets. Five years later, a commercial laundry experimented with playing ragtime records; productivity increased dramatically when ironing was done in time to the music. In 1922, the Minneapolis post office tried playing records in its night sorting room and found that sorting errors fell.
By 1930, many American factories provided some sort of music, either live or phonograph, and the numbers of workplaces where music was supplied increased steadily…
—Nick Humez, “Muzak,” the St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture
The important thing about music from an Islamic view is that music expresses, or seeks to express, emotion. The purpose of music, when performed or recorded, is to produce an emotion, or emotions, in the listener—to affect the listener.
Islam is concerned about music because : (1) Islam believes that human emotions should be controlled because this control of our emotions is demanded of us by Allah (tabarak wa’tala)—it is what makes us human, and civilized, and enables us to remember Allah (tabarak wa’tala), and so access and maintain the numinous (the sacred) in our own lives; (2) listening to or playing (or re-producing) music on instruments or musical devices involves a lack of control because the music is the product of someone else’s mind and/or emotions and in the vast majority of instances is un-numinous: that is, it is profane, and seldom if ever is a remembrance of Allah (tabarak wa’tala); instead, music mostly conspires to distance us from Allah (tabarak wa’tala): it is mostly entertainment; distraction; frivolity; and mostly, in the modern world, a representation of what is Shaitanic—lust, greed, self-indulgence, pride, arrogance, loss of self-control.
The point is that music is a human construct, a human creation, and when we respond to music we are responding to or being influenced by this human attempt at creation. This applies even if a piece of music is an attempt at some sort of “communication” rather than an overt, obvious, expression of emotion; the music is still a human construct, and it is still an attempt to convey something fallible: someone else’s ideas, concerns, beliefs, notions, limited understanding or whatever. This also applies even—particularly—if the music is considered “religious”: that is, it is an attempt to re-present something of the sacred, the divine. In this case, there is a reliance on someone else’s perception or understanding of the sacred, the divine, and this is and always will be imperfect, error-prone and ultimately unnecessary. For Islam believes that the perfect perception, the perfect understanding of the sacred, the divine, already exists—in the Holy Quran, and the example of the Prophet Muhammad (salla Allahu ‘alayhi wa sallam). Thus, music—of whatever kind—is itself at best irrelevant and unnecessary, and at worst, a distraction, a path away from Allah (tabarak wa’tala), and a denial of that self-restraint which makes us human.
—Abdul Aziz, “Why Music is Haram”
When I was thirteen, I had a friend who was in his twenties. He began helping my father, who was in charge of our youth group. The music he listened to was wrong, and as I became closer to this guy, I began to listen to his music and began to get deeper into it. Finally, it was to the point that it no longer satisfied the flesh and I wanted more. So I then started to listen to regular, secular rock music, and it caused moral failure in my life.
I would warn anyone who would experiment with “Christian rock” not to do so, or it is likely that the same result would happen to them. Thank you!
—a 16-year-old student from Michigan
She checks out Mozart while she does tae-bo—
