Abdal Hakim Murad – Music in the Islamic Tradition
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The theory that humans are more aware of certain sounds than their surroundings affects their mental health and behavior. The history and clinical benefits of classical music therapy for mental disorders, including its ability to improve breathing and socializing, are discussed. The artistry of Islamic music is difficult for Westerners due to cultural and political implications, but the "mood" and "monic button" of the brain and body are important drivers of emotions. The use of instrumental music in various ways, including religious practices, political events, and political parties, is discussed, along with its use in various ways for various purposes, including religious practices and political events.
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Cambridge Muslim college training the next generation of Muslim
thinkers Smilla hamdu lillah wa salatu salam ala Rasulillah. He
was off Biggie, Manuela.
It's a rather subtle, difficult, often unsatisfying, kind of
subject, not least because it's one of those sort of issues. Work
Muslims get kind of agitated and jumpy very quickly, be interesting
to actually make a list of those subjects where somebody only has
to press a button and everybody starts jumping up and down, saying
halal or haram or whatever.
Hijab issues, gender interaction issues are a famous one. And this
seems to be another for whatever reason, even though it's kind of
historically and got Aniki, yonder sort of outer edge really, of what
is actually explicitly treated, and also
surrounded by a good deal of classical discussions that were
not resolved in the classical period and unlikely to be resolved
by our lesser selves. But if we're looking more generally at the
question of sound,
there are certain things that we can say where we can perhaps make
some progress without getting into the minutiae of the
sound is
the sense whereby revelation first reaches us. The Quran is a book, a
Kitab. But the Quran was about that one of the five senses that
is to do with the ears, it's oral, and the production of a sound
which is only perceived by people who can hear that is the modality
of communication human subjects engaging with each other in
creation, which has been chosen preferentially to be the level on
which
the elemental principle of the Divine speech operates. Revelation
as a heard text.
That means that we are dealing with a human faculty which is to
do with
hearing depth, and engaging even with the infinite because when we
hear the divine speech, we are hearing something that is treated
with all of these theological paradoxes about the uncreated
antiquity of the word
as to how can men or Rachmaninoff do that on Kadima terms, if at all
now, Sophie bill paid me
verses from the merciful which are renewed but which are ancient
whose ancient ness is the quality of he who is ancient. So when we
hear the sound, and the letters and the cadences, and the
syncopations of the book,
what we are hearing is something that predates hearing itself. So
already, there is something about this that is mysterious,
paradoxical, hard to figure out, but whose impact is profound and
music, using the word in the largest sense, anything beautiful
that we like to hear, partakes of that. Scientists argue about it.
Psychologists argue about it. It's not just the football hat.
Everybody is not sure what is going on here.
Why is it that when human beings not really very much animals, or
anything else, as far as we can tell, but human beings listen to
certain types of sounds, certain measurable neurological and
physiological and behavioral consequences tend to occur? When
we listen to other kinds of sounds, we get other sorts of
responses that are often the opposite.
What is it about sounds that can have this profound effect on us,
that affect us more immediately than say, seeing certain things
or, or touching certain things. Sound is something that the air is
a deep part of us. What is happening here and that the
neuroscientists have tried hard to figure this out the octave, for
instance, that kind of mystery, and they think they may have
understood it, but perhaps they don't. Why is it that when you
have
middle C and then you go up to the sea above it, every culture in the
world recognizes that those two notes are different, but the same?
So if you go up to the D people are less happy? It's not an
octave, something else is happening. Why is that? What's the
nature of the octave? Why should the human brain the human ear be
attuned to that there's such a fundamental basic thing in Chinese
music, Indian music, Islamic music, Western music is something
that's in us it's not just a product of culture. Why should
that be?
The
answer not sure. But they're doing some interesting work now, with
various sophisticated
electric resonance scanners so forth, they can see things
happening in the brain when certain sorts of sounds are
produced.
And we don't quite know how that works, just we don't quite know
why a certain cadence is considered to be harmonic was
other cadences or not. So if you have the first and the third, and
the fifth note of an octave, or major octave, it makes a nice
harmony. If you have say, first and a minor third, and then a
fifth becomes something that can shock us. And a lot of modern
music is exploiting that, because it's interested in us exploring
why we are shocked by certain particular sounds not a very
pleasant experience, listen to a lot of it, but it is challenging
us to think about why we have this assumption about the nature of
beauty and certain symmetries. And the study of that goes back almost
as far as the study of anything, the ancient Greeks were very
interested in music, they had musical instruments, they had
voices. Greek drama, which was their principal cultural
production was essentially like an operatic performance with lots of
choruses, it was
musical, and we have an awareness of some of the modes that they use
the Dorian mode, the MixoLydian mode, some of which have the
cognates. Moving on into the modes of Islamic music, and even Plato
and others were thinking about Pythagoras, why is it that some of
these modes have a particular effect on us.
And of course, they couldn't really work it out. But in ancient
times of particularly, Pythagoras thought that it was because within
us, there is the capacity to resonate with things that are
intrinsic in the universe that are part of the mathematics and the
geometry of the of the universe. So the idea that the celestial
spheres actually make a particular sound or hit a particular note, as
they glide along the music of the spheres, something that came into
medieval
Christian theology as well, very often Peter, was was sure of this.
So the idea that harmony and our resonance with certain intervals,
certain possibilities, is best. laned, in terms of it resonating
with the musical instrument, that is creation itself, is something
that
has a very long history. And that goes into the Islamic discussions
with Alfa Robbie and his great book of, of music and is
developed.
So it's something human beings have always been interested in.
And we still can't quite explain it.
But still, it is. So it has such a significant impact, that music
therapy is now a big thing that you can get on the NHS and all the
major hospitals will offer things for a wide range of complaints. If
you look at any big medical website, and you look up music
therapy, you'll see that's almost everything is covered by forms of
music therapy, which are known to have positive clinical outcomes,
otherwise, the NHS wouldn't pay for it. If it was useless to
somebody listening to music, they're not going to pay for that
it has a clinical outcome. And we all think, well, it's probably
mental illnesses. That is true. Because for certain forms of
schizophrenia are routinely treated with music therapy. Now,
sometimes forms of chronic depression are treated with music,
major hospitals will have people who work through people with
music, instruments and rhythms sometimes
it just we don't quite know why it works. But we can see that it does
work. And a lot of
mental health care actually uses therapists whose actual mode of
operation is not really understood, but since it works, we
go with it because the brain consciousness is such a subtle,
difficult thing. We're really in the infancy of neuroscience still.
So mental health issues for sure, demonstratively.
Certain types of music, release endorphins in the brain, reduce
anxieties, give people a sense of serenity. Everybody knows that
certain types of music, certain harmonies help us to chill, who
doesn't know that? And in certain focused scientific ways this is
effective in treating certain forms of mental illness. Obsessive
Compulsive Disorder sometimes can can be usefully treated with music
therapy,
certain allergies, even
also,
heart disease. It's been shown that the pulse is regularized by
music and it also the blood pressure is lowered amongst people
who are listening to music
Why exactly how were for again, the scientists aren't there yet,
but it's so demonstrable in clinical trials that it is
regularly, regularly used. So we know this, and Islamic
civilization has already known that for a very long time, if
you've ever been to, for instance, the town of Edina, in Turkey,
which was the big Hadith city of the Ottoman Empire, great follow
on that there.
Near the data of Hadith, there's also the hospital for treating
mental patients with music therapy. And they've turned it
into a nice kind of museum now. And you can see they have these
rather sort of awkward looking waxworks, Turkish outfits and
droopy mustaches. And it's not terribly well done. But you get a
sense of how the building was used, that patient would be
brought out by the physician, and the symptoms would be read out.
And the musicians would play something that was believed to be
beneficial. And there's a famous one in Damascus as part of
classical Islamic civilization. And that still is alive, you can
go to Istanbul and you can buy CDs of
music that is used in the treatment of mental disorders,
it's still a living tradition. And the Turks have other things to do
with rhythms as well and to do with
the the beat of a horse's hooves, which is a very ancient therapy
that they have from pre Islamic times, that they believe that
somebody with a mental disorder can be helped by the rhythm of
riding on a horse of a particular kind. And that, again, is
something that is still available in certain corners of Turkey. So
Turkey, in a strange way, very modernized, but still has retained
a lot of these things quite well. So we have these ancient things
that do seem to have some contemporary clinical benefit. And
in terms of singing, singing of all of the forms of quote unquote
music or recitation is thought to have particular benefits. So for
instance, forms of asthma are often dealt with, by training
people's voices in a kind of to sing. Because it affects the
larynx, it affects the vocal cords, it opens up certain things
that may have been twisted or disoriented, speaking, very
unscientifically here, but by certain modern urban habits, diet,
things in the air, dust mites, whatever it might be, that the
regular practice of singing,
actually does seem to have some demonstrable clinical benefit in
cases of asthma, and so on. And this is not very surprising,
because these are very ancient practices, singing, some
anthropologists paleontologists will say actually singing is
before speech for human beings. Very, very ancient, secular view,
of course, but it's the speculation that they offer it
something elemental. Human beings have always sung, there is no
culture ever known. Monks, human beings where there haven't been
traditions of getting together around the campfire, and singing
together reciting the heroism of one's ancestors, talking about God
or the gods, and collectively celebrating is something very
antique, and therefore something that's natural to the species and
therefore has positive health outcomes. Nowadays, because of
electricity, and CDs, and
iPods and AI players and the rest of it, we tend to be passive in
our consumption of music. And historically, that was not the
case. Historically, people generally were generators have
their own music. And this helped to bond families, to bond
neighborhoods to bond church communities to bond or different
religious communities through the human sharing that comes about by
jointly making a sound. It's a little bit like sharing a meal
together, you're doing something bodily. And as it were, the
breaths commingle and everybody has to be on the same page. And
it's always been in Elizabethan England. It was what you did when
you went to visit somebody, you bring along sheet music. And it
was specially printed. So one sheet of paper for four people, it
was expensive, could be put on a table. And people could read it
wherever they were on the table with different parts. And they
were really good because they didn't have DVDs. It didn't have
iTunes, passwords. It was just their own music. And because it
was what they will often it's thought really good. And it was a
major form of cultural production, which nowadays we've lost. Most of
us didn't really like other people listening to us singing, we do it
kind of quietly in front of the shaving mirror or something
because we're not good at it. We're not trained, but
historically, human communities would sing and would sing well,
and very few people are naturally tone deaf. Occasionally people
just can't hit a note. That's maybe one in 100 people. Usually
if people don't sing well
because they've lost a certain knack of listening to others and
the individualism, the self centeredness of modernity tends to
make us less good at listening to subtler things of what's going on
in environment. And the fact that so many sounds going on
simultaneously in the modern world doesn't help either. In a
traditional society that there might be a donkey could have
somewhere around the corner and one's wife might be shrieking at
the children might be a few recognizable sounds. But the
modern city, which has a real cacophony of 1000s of cars, and
sirens, and other stuff, is something that seems to be
blunting our capacity to recognize pitch. So people nowadays are not
so good at singing as they used to, and of course, with the
secularization of society. They didn't learn the carols, they
didn't learn the hymns. And
we're kind of passive in our consumption of music. Partly also
because people can make money out of us being passive, whereas if
regenerating it ourselves, kind of capitalistic system isn't quite so
good at making money out of that. So there's something about
modernity that makes us passive consumers of music rather than
active producers of it. So what what is fairly evident is that the
production of music and beautiful sounds and singing in particular
is as old as human beings and is also something that particularly
important in religion, I
don't think there's a single religion that hasn't cultivated
the beauty of of sound. The Holy Prophet alayhi salatu salam said
to one of his companions, who was beautifully has a beautiful voice
reciting Quran, locket Ott, Ms. Martin, meanness, Amir Ali, the
old you've been given one of the pipes of David because according
to the biblical text, David played pipes and danced in front of the
Ark of the Covenant nuts in the story, but we have this idea of
beauty in Quranic recitation being important has seen or God enemy
also article, make the Quran more beautiful through your your
voices. And this is something that everybody's experienced, if you're
in the mosque to interact with, and the Imam with a lot of short,
who knows the McCombs and knows the MaHA Raj and desanding
Beautiful, it's an amazing experience and this beautiful
thing on the planet. But if he's kind of got a smoker's cough, and
he's kind of always not semitone off the right note, at the end of
each verse, you just kind of you go through, it's a completely
different experience. The actual sound, if it was scanned by
computer might seem very similar. But the human soul can tell that
there's a world of difference between a beautiful Ted read and
an ugly Ted read and clearly, the data requires that we present the
beauty of the text with with beauty.
So none of that is particularly
controversial. But in Islamic civilization, then the awareness
that music is an axiom, and the Quran is itself musical
is not something that anybody's contested. Nobody said you have to
recite the Quran in an ugly way. Although sometimes certain
Puritans are anxious about certain very elaborate forms of the Avant,
for instance,
a friend of mine was at Islamic University of Medina once and the
normal was in he said, at the University mosque, had emphysema
and a really terrible crack, horrible voice. So every time you
get this kind of crackling, and this nightmare sound would assail
your ears. That went on for years. And then one day that guy was ill,
and one of the African students did it instead. And it was
beautiful. And the Mufti of Saudi Arabia was there at the time and
asked to see this point. Don't ever do that again. ever do that,
again. Because their tradition in nudged is that Amazon is listen to
Saudi Arabia from Riyadh is a long one.
That's what they do. And the Maliki tradition also, to be fair,
has real reservations about a very ornamented, as on the golden mean,
is what is is required. But in many parts of the Islamic world,
you find that the Amazon is itself an art form.
With different McCombs being used at different times of day, and
they really know their stuff. traditionally trained Egyptians or
Turks or Bosnians, Indonesians they know this, it's, it's
something that maybe hundreds of people are going to hear. And if
it really is beautiful and gets into their soul, it's going to
make it more likely for them to come to the masjid. We really
will.
Now Islamic music. I mentioned that Greek music has them has the
modes, a few basic modes, the Phrygian mode. Also, we didn't
know too much about how that worked. Although some modern
musicologist have reconstructed what ancient Greek music sounded
like pentatonic scale and said
In
the liar that they had, and also a pipe with with to two pipes, and
we can kind of reconstruct what it sounded like.
But one of the features of Islamic music, including Tajweed, is that
gigantic multiplication of the modes,
which become the principal form of, of aesthetic expression in the
oral dimension of Islamic civilization that everybody had to
know, the modes. I remember when I was living in Cairo.
The great
there are certain great opportunities for the Buddha with
the Quran reciter really to in trance and intoxicate his audience
and make them cry. The really good ones were really good, even though
the microphones Oh, my God. Just as an aside,
the Ministry of Alkaff at the time said, all the mosques have to have
microphones and sound systems, what's the cheapest microphone in
the world. And they found the system that is used on Russian
Railways.
That's the cheapest and of course, also, it sounds the cheapest. So
every mosque in Egypt has one of these clunky things. And actually,
in those masks, there's a little button on those things, which I've
seen and if you press the button, it goes ding dong. This is to
announce the next train.
So that is really a problem because the zarnas Beautiful,
subtle thing has been really coarsened and reduced by the poor
quality of the sound system. Anyway, great experience in Cairo.
They still do it is at the tomb of the mosque of Imam Shafi.
Rahmatullahi Ali, before the khutbah there is the best most
popular recite in Egypt, who is there for about an hour doing his
stuff.
And because this is for connoisseurs, people go along, and
they really know what he's doing. And they know the McCombs, and
it's very interactive. So people have Allahu Akbar, Allah after
Halleck, at the end of each verses quite noisy, and the reciter can
see what's working, what's not working, and which way he's going
to go next. And then they'll call out asking for a MACOM. So they
always begin with more calm so that then if he goes into mcbomb,
court, or more commonly heaven, they'll say, give us some court or
give us some hijas. And he'll often respond. And it's a very
interactive kind of experience. Because that is the essence of, of
Islamic musical civilization and lock arms. Not so much tune,
although it's their rhythm is another whole world, which is much
more developed in Islamic music than in western music. Because you
have strange things like nine beats in a bar, and bars that go
on for 31 beats and things that Mozart would have been driven up
the wall by s3 for time or for for time or common time. It's western
music is
rhythmically pretty simple by comparison with what the Turks and
the Indians and others were doing. But far more subtle than that is
the modal system,
which is one of the great achievements of Islamic
civilization. Most of the modes which they use are actually
derived by Muslims in the medieval period.
I admit this, this guy came to me recently said, my shake says, the
Muslims are haram.
The Ottoman Empire for 600 years. Nobody ever thought the Muslims
were haram. And somehow great. I found something new to make haram.
Is this the amendment mindset? Some people have, you know, all
those Allamah that were listening to that they were wrong? I know,
I've heard. I said, even the McCombs that were composed by
Allah, Matt. I gave him some examples. And he kind of didn't
think he really believed it was just kind of trying it out. It was
shocking. Nothing, no delievered possibly that could challenge the
fact of the McCombs system which one of the masterpieces, the
uncontroversial masterpiece achievements of our civilization.
But the McCombs, as you will know, are about the intervals between
the different pitches in the octave. And whereas in western
music, you've got eight notes in an octave 12 semitones in an
octave. And that's it. That's all that's allowed, except in modern
music that does eternal things.
If you listen to Stockhausen's sort of modern Concerto for a
violin and for helicopters, for instance, he doesn't stick with
the octaves, it's cacophonic stuff that they like nowadays, but
Islamic music doesn't use the conventional divisions, equal
pitches in an octave, but far more subtle things because it says
between B and B flat, there's something else going on.
And it may not even be halfway between the B and the B flat a
quarter turn. So that's part of the artistry of Islamic musical
civilization is that it isn't restricted to the
The strict rules of 12 quarter turns the octave. But it has all
kinds of complex things like one MK arm where you've got 17
intervals going up, and a 16 coming down. And you really have
to listen very carefully or be brought up in one of those
civilizations where people just are familiar with that kind of
music, really to understand it. And Islamic music is quite
difficult for a lot of Westerners really to, to hear because they're
waiting for the kind of 12341234 and under kind of trumpet comes in
and it's it's a bit simple, great, Beethoven great, but still simple
compared to the basic assumptions and methods of Islamic music,
which is much more subtle and has much more room for improvisation
and, and, and exploration.
That it's, it's hard to get the point of that. If you're not used
to a note that's between the B and the B flat, it just sounds like
the singer is out of tune. It's a different way of experiencing
music. But it's actually common in some of the Celtic fringes. So the
traditional Hebridean, and Shetland music in England, for
instance, he has a lot of quarter turns.
Indian music, which historically has interacted a lot with Islamic
music because the great musicians of India, very often they were
Muslims, and still the case met in many ways.
Muslims were the masters, and that, but there's indigenous Indic
Traditions of music that are distinct, but they're also a
modal. And they have all kinds of rules like, what mode? What raga
Do you play at what time of the year, or for what kind of occasion
or what time of day
because the the music and the mood has to be very subtly calibrated
to the spiritual atmosphere that prevails with the audience at that
particular time. It's a very subtle thing. You can see why it's
often used medicinally. And in the Islamic world, also, these, these
dozens of McCombs, which became really hundreds of McCombs,
particularly at the hands of the Ottoman Turks became a whole
universe of quite rarefied and often quite difficult.
Difficult,
inaccessible elite music sometimes because most of the Muslims are
not used for something like Tajweed for instance,
such weed might use about 15 McCombs maximum. So if you go for
instance, to the 30th mosque in Istanbul for your tearaway
after the a shirt, the silhouette and so forth, then the first two
records will be in a particular McCollum. And again, they usually
start with MACOM Saba, or the Lumina shape on Raji interval, and
that's how it starts. And then after two right guys, there'll be
a tsp of a Tim G, and then another two rockers, and then there'll be
an Ilahi in a different MACOM. There'll be a group of men who are
singing and a different column and then the next four rockers of the
tearaway will be in that no calm and it will go that usually not
always, I think, usually to more calm so that according to this,
this, this traditional progression.
But they weren't use some of the very rarefied things that were
used for Ottoman court music, that sort of private soirees. It's
those aren't usually used for Tajweed. It's not haram, it's just
not not customary to make people think this sounds a bit new or
strange when they really should be concentrating on the sound of the
Quran.
the subtlest question then is, if we know, and the neurologists tell
us that music has an effect on the brainwaves and an effect on the
physiology and something deep that goes within us?
Can we look at each MACOM and say,
This MACOM produces this kind of mood? And this knock on suppresses
that kind of mood? And historically, the Muslims have
said, Yes. So farabi, who wrote the first big book of music, in
our civilization, early Arabic philosopher, famous lutenist as
well.
The story goes that with his loot, he could make an audience laugh.
Or he could make an audience cry, just to the going through the
McCombs.
So there is a theory in our civilization that identifies
particular McCombs with a particular mood, which is why some
of us funerals, for instance, and others, weddings are obvious
things, but there's more subtle, more subtle things as well. And
what happens on the sort of subtle liminal level when a Greek
practitioner of Tajweed or Salawat, or moulage, is taking
people up through the McCombs in a particular order, at a particular
time of day, when it's raining or when it's not raining or the other
things that are affecting the psychic environment of the people
and then taking them back down again. It's probably beyond words
as music is anyway, but those who are in that environment
Particularly those who are really familiar with the tradition. for
them. It's a finer, deeper, more amazing experience than listening
to Dame Curie at the London Coliseum belting out verde. It's
something that is deep.
So we know that we have this amazing civilization in Islam at
the question of instrumental music. I didn't really want to get
into the fifth house yet. And I mentioned that this is a kind of
panic button issue for a lot of Muslims.
It is the consensus of the fourth Sunday schools that instrumental
music which they argue over the exact definition of it, is haram.
That's the normal view.
But if you start to go looking, if you're interested in minority
views, safest thing in Islam, as always stick to what seems to be
the conceptual view. And even ideal Kilbirnie really unexpected
voice, you know, who are the loco Banias? Is this big, sort of Saudi
preacher, Salafi, who has sometimes unusual uncontroversial
views, and sometimes he's leading the prayer in Makkah, and then
sometimes he says something and they find somebody else is kind of
thinks for himself. He's the one who last year did the famous tweet
about ISIS. You may recall that even got into the English press,
saying we have to admit to the ISIS comes from our own Salafi
Aqeedah. And that was a huge thing in Saudi Arabia, and people have
nothing to do with us. This is what he said his tweet and then he
went on Saudi television to explain, we generated them. But
the other controversies got himself involved was about six
years ago, when he really went in a kind of zaharie tooth comb way
through all of the relevant Hadith and said that he doesn't actually
think that instrumental music is haram
karma to piano, everybody starts jumping up and shouting and stuff.
But insofar as you can see a kind of pattern emerging on the
landscape of all amount with their different positions, huge, ugly
generalization, but maybe there's something in it the more you move
towards the kind of archival side of the film spectrum, the Hanif
is, the more people are inclined to prohibit. And the more you move
towards the knuckle, or the sort of Hadith based area, the more
you're going to find people who will allow it.
Desire is for instance, to work more literalist than the humble is
a generally allow most instrumental music so even hasm
zaharie, the most literalist of all says, everything that isn't
explicitly forbidden in the Quran. And the hadith is all right. And
you don't have the right to do a PS or to extrapolate in any way.
And if this particular type of Spanish flute is not there in a
specific Hadith, and forbidden, forbidden, forbidden is not within
the human powers, to say that that thing is forbidden. That's his,
his well known view.
And some of the some of the Maliki is also interestingly,
particularly some of the rather austere original Medina Malik is
will report the views from Imam Malik that he without certain
types of stringed instruments and types of flute that's not the mesh
or the usual view and the madhhab, which is horrible for bidding but
there is that position. Now one of the also reports of some of the
disciples who remember Sheffy that they would that Imam Shafi would
allow certain types of instrumental music. But if you
move to that kind of alkyl, and sort of meta Ed rationalizing the
the Hanafis generally produced the fewest exceptions. So there's even
Cassone for instance, as as long discussion, and as badass as the
Hanafi forget about all the different kinds of instruments,
which if somebody has been found listening to them means that he
can never testify in a Sharia court, for instance, tough. That's
an interesting circumstance, I don't know what we can make of it,
that it's the kind of rationalizes of the folklore hat, who have
inclined most of the view that it's forbidden, and literalist who
tend to produce this minority that says that it's permissible.
That's just just an aside. There's also of course, the reformist
tendencies. So in Egypt, muhammad shah, towards Sheikh Lhasa in the
1950s. So it's fine. Chef gentle Huck and early 1980s When I was
living in Egypt, did a more complex fetter looking at the
classical views and saying, it's not a matter of consensus, it's a
matter of majority
Hacohen the instrumental musics, music is not allowed. And
essentially, it depends on the mock acid. In other words,
if you're playing a violin in a nightclub on pyramid road, and
there's some dancing going on, that's not really something that
she is going to be terribly overjoyed about. But if it's in a
different content
ECT work doesn't lead to or isn't conventionally associated with the
acceptability of corrupt practices, then it's something
else. So part of the rationalizing tendency in recent times has been
to link it to the mock acid. And to say, it's really about what
sort of behavior music will will lead to. And you do get some odd
discussions in the medieval period about certain types of pipes, they
always are associated with with facade, and therefore that's why
they're haram. While a pipe is just a pipe, it's not necessarily
the association.
Most
use of called Dawei, of course, as long Fatone, which he authorizes
instrumental music, so that kind of reformist school is there as
well.
The other issue that is interesting is what do you do with
certain types of electronic music?
So, for instance, if the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia has a
ringtone on his phone,
or if he has a doorbell that goes ding dong. Yeah, there's a serious
issue. Is that music or not? What is the definition of music? If
it's just Dong? Is that music? What does it have to sound like?
If it sounds kind of like an electronics? Or what about a
police siren? What about a fire engine? What about music in a
supermarket? Where exactly is the boundary? So it's never quite
clear cut. There's always areas which are confusing an electronic
music, which kind of surrounds us. Every time you turn your computer
on.
It's my it's my new
my new Mac computer, stuff for a night. It's got some kind of
symphonic thing at the beginning, maybe some people are agitated by
that. But that's to make this shitty a rather strange thing.
It's not really there for entertainment, just press the ON
button. So these are also issues. And what do you do with certain
types of
synthesized music that sound like music that has been generated by
these putatively forbidden pipes and stringed instruments and so
forth?
Not easy. What do you do with a human voice that is so well
trained that it can sound exactly like a violin?
So a lot of gray areas. But my teachers usual preference was to
err on the side of caution. And there's wisdom in that because
what is unmistakably and unambiguously and unanimously
Halal is the use of the human voice.
And the human voice is actually the most profound and subtle and
beautiful of instruments, because it's part of the gift that Allah
has given us. That despite the complexity of the guitar, and the
loot, and the piano and organ, it doesn't compete with the beauty of
a great singer. This is part of the tech team, the honoring that's
been given to Benny Adam,
which means that to some extent, you can have the fullness of a
musical experience without having to get into those controversies
and things with harmonies and the fullness of the MACOM system. And
also the sense that the human voice is coming from the human
depths. Unlike the sound of a pipe or violin or the organ or chapel
next door, which is something mechanical, it there's something
more human about it, and hence more humanly interesting. So that
is, I think, where we are at the moment in the armor, even though
we're at three, sort of jumpy and paranoid time, where people are
really hyperventilating about things which are profoundly
nebulosity
what was his book called?
I can't remember but it's about some air let something visa now
let us his great 17th 18th century siege of Damascus, one of the
great Allamah of the Ottoman Empire with hundreds of books,
very profound person who again gives you a long explanation of
why the use of musical instruments if it's not connected to belly
dancing industry is fine.
So that does exist, those books are there, whether it's Nablus
even husband, two very different life forms that have been in his
there and the online but best to stay with the uncontroversial
because the world is full of minds ready to be stepped on. And the
human voice is handled at that the best of all, instruments and we do
know now the scientists have told us collective singing releases
those endorphins and gets us going and helps us to bond and is a
primordial and ancient human practice and a sacred practice. So
that's all I wanted to say except commercial break. We are selling
some of our fine CDs and DVDs at knockdown prices only two
participants in the CMC annual retreat. We have an all shariah
compliant,
fingers off the panic
items not the violin in sight. We have the old of Bella's ng we have
the
see them being held up now by
my assistants.
There is that gleamed from the rod as a Shahadat which is mostly in
English which is recycle In Celtic harmonies of the history of the
island beat those Sufi songs of Andhra Lucia which is flamenco and
traditional Arabic and Spanish songs from the time of the
Inquisition, and those the knowledge of Imam Borras ng
perhaps the best known of all knowledge recorded live in the
azalea mosque in Cape Town according to some very beautiful
African hominids that they use and all kinds of other goodies that
you can get every penny goes to the Cambridge new mosque project.
So
So, that will be after this session inshallah and before thee
before then the mouse