With soccer and basketball seasons beginning, a lot of us follow these sports throughout the year. Some of us do often get invited by friends to join them to watch the game at a place where alcohol may be served such as a bar. Is this permissible?
Shaykh Yahya Ibrahim answers
Is it permissible to go with my friends to watch a sports game at a bar or up top.
So sometimes you get this invitation to attend with people who maybe don't have the same religious practices that you do. And sometimes those kind of events may collide with some of the values that you've established for yourself as a Muslim, as a practicing Muslim. One of the most contentious ones, for example, is what seems to be an innocuous event, let's go watch a basketball game or a, you know, a World Cup or a football game at a sports bar at a sports bar, where everyone around you is consuming alcohol, liquor, and so on. My suggestion to you is that this would not be something that you would want to attend, and it would be something that I would consider impermissible. The
three reasons for this one, we know that liquor in and of itself is something that we don't just not take ourselves, but we try to recommend to others to limit and eventually ended out of their life. And therefore it becomes a moral issue for you to attend at a place where you feel on a moral level, that intoxication or that which leads to it is something that is sinful behavior. Number two is those kind of sessions. Although they may be a jovial atmosphere, they don't always remain as such. There's lots of violence at times that occurs in those kinds of events. And in those kinds of venues. And this is documented, you will see that there's a statistical correlation between
intoxication consumption of toxic guns, and the number of crimes and violence that is committed during and thereafter. Third, and finally, it is a place where the shaitan would be attracted to and this is something that we believe as Muslims that the straight on is at a place where scene occurs. And these kinds of venues where we believe as Muslims as a part of our values, that intoxication or that which leads to what is something that is considered sinful, I would recommend for you not to attend, you can always invite them to a neutral place to a place where they will also enjoy the World Cup without having to drink and so on. That would be my recommendation to you a lot with that.