Ismail Kamdar – Halal Fun in the Ancient Muslim World

			We have a really fascinating lesson that we're going to get into now. And it's on a topic that I
honestly don't think anybody has taught before, in terms of modern teaching, maybe in the past data.
But as far as recent teaching is concerned, I don't think anyone's covered this topic. And that's a
look at the past times in entertainment that was popular in the Muslim world.
		

			Believe it or not, the Muslim world or other place where people had fun. This picture, for example,
shows us one of the most popular sports in the ancient Western world, which is elephant Polo. In
some countries, this is still a sport. In some Western countries, this is still a common pastime,
elephant polo, they literally ride around in elephants, trying to score goals, who will win the
ball, it's, it's something many of us don't even know exists, but you are the popular part of Muslim
culture and remain so in some countries right until today. And the point of this is to show you that
our history is not all wars, and battles and politics. There are other sides of our history, which
		

			for some reason, nobody talks about. And again, this course is all about talking about those parts
of our history. So today, we're going to look at the history of fun and games in the Muslim world.
And to get started, let's take a look at what does Islam have to say about recreation about having
fun. And of course, many of you may know the first book I ever wrote when I was 22 years old, was
having fun, the halal way entertainment in Islam. And again, it's a topic that I've been passionate
about from a young age. Because I grew up in a environment where we were taught that having fun is
haram. And when I studied the Quran, when I studied at Eastern specifically, when I studied history,
		

			it completely contradicted that teaching. Right. So what is Islam teaches Islam teaches us to take
care of our basic human needs. One of those human needs being having fun and relaxing. The Prophet
salallahu Salam had fun, the Sahaba had fun. There is absolutely nothing in the Quran or Hadith that
says It is haram to have fun. It is haram to enjoy yourself. So all Islam calls upon is balance,
live a balanced life a time for this a time for that time for a bad time for work, time for family
time for fun. And one of the Sahaba was feeling guilty that when he was with his wife and children,
he forgot about about Ibadah and about worshipping Allah and he just got caught up in enjoying
		

			himself with them. And when he explained this to the practice, lawyers love the proper slice, I'm
talking just normal. He told him that's normally tuned to the time for this. And the time for that
this is the translation of the hadith is a time for this having fun, the time for that worshiping
Allah balance. That's what it's all about. Our religion does not tell us not to have fun, you should
not feel guilty to have fun. If you are living a productive life. I personally make time for fun. If
you look at my daily schedule, I have time for my writings for my cost recording for my management
work for homeschooling my children for all of this, but I also have time to relax and enjoy myself.
		

			Because that is something that you need to do in order to be your best in order to be effective in
order to have a balanced and happy life. Reality is that the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam and
the Sahaba they had many, many fun activities. If you look at how they live their lives, despite all
the difficulties going on around them, debt, and war, and enemies and hypocrites and spies and
dealing with all these things. They still have fun. You still hear stories of them running races
with their wives and having horse racing and having wrestling and singing why building the masjid
and seeing why building the trench and children running around in the streets chasing each other?
		

			It was it's something that's natural, it's something completely natural. So I understand how we have
in this day and age, some Muslims who believe that, you know, kids should be worshipping Allah all
day, and there's no place for funding in Islam. That's not what Islam teaches. That's not what the
Quran teaches. That's not the practice of the prophets like some of the sahaba. And that's never
been the case at any point in our history. And it all goes back to the principles of fake the
principles of Islamic law, one of the most basic principles of Islamic law is us Lupita Sheikh
Khalifa that the original state of anything is permissibility meaning when it comes to the halal
		

			things of this world, when it comes to things of this world in general, everything is permissible,
unless it is something that Allah has prohibited or it's something harmful to you. So if something
does not harm people, there's nothing in the Quran nothing in the Hadith that prohibits it. We do
not have the right to make it haram just because we don't like it or because we have some strange
understanding of Islam. So this is what Islam teaches us about having fun, it's natural. It's a
human need. If you live a balanced life, there's nothing wrong with doing it. And majority of ways
of having fun of Halal except for those which are listed in the Quran or hadith of Haram are those
		

			which are harmful to society, like taking recreational drugs or
		

			Smoking cigarettes these things people do them for recreation, but they are haram because they are
harmful for your health. Right? So that's the principle to apply. So the Muslim world now what do
you look like in terms of recreation? Well, believe it or not, having fun was normal. In the Muslim
world, doing things for fun was completely normal. Again, some of us have this warped idea that the
Muslim world was you know, ever you went, it was just old, ya know, they just all AMA and Mujahideen
and people making liquor, children sitting and studying Quran. Reality, it was normal people, people
who went to the Machida previous although they went home, they play the game of chess, they they
		

			wrestled with their friends, they, they went to the theater to watch a performance of poetry
performance or musical performance. They lived normal lights balance between worshiping Allah doing
their work, and enjoying time with their family and friends. It was completely normal. They had
theaters, they had famous entertainers, we'll talk about one in the in the lesson on music, like
real celebrities that shaped the culture. We think this is a modern thing. No in in Islamic Spain,
they were celebrity singers, male and female, who shaped their culture, or they had popular sports,
by certain sports were very popular in the Muslim world at that time.
		

			The things they used to do for fun, were mostly playing board games, particularly chess and sports.
But there were other things they did for fun as well. So for example, if you look at some of the
great inventors in Islamic history,
		

			three of the most famous inventors were known as the bamboo Musa brothers, right, they were these
three brothers, who invented many, many things, some of which were important scientifically, but
over 100 of which were things they just invented for fun, right they invented fun devices like a
puzzle boxes and puzzles and, and different things that people could fiddle around with and solve.
And these were entertainment, you know, things that basically twice that people used to buy to
entertain themselves. So they invented overhand a coastal 100, different fun and entertaining,
puzzle devices and toys. And
		

			it's quite interesting. When you look at the Islamic history, it doesn't seem like anybody
considered these things to be haram, except maybe a small minority of people, by the way, just
normal parts of life that everybody did, you know, and nobody seemed to have a problem with it. So
what was most popular what are the most popular pastime? This list may surprise some of you towards
the ending, but obviously wrestling, right from the time of Rasulullah, sallAllahu, alayhi wasallam.
At any point in our history, wrestling seems to be amongst the most popular sports in two ways, both
as a competition and as a show. So today, we know we have amateur wrestling, which is a competition
		

			and we have professional wrestling, which is like a show where people are just putting on a
performance to entertain the crowd. In the Muslim world. Both of these existed right in the Muslim
world, we had actual competitions with people wrestling each other to the ground. But we also people
who like get in front of a crowd and do moves to each other just to entertain the crowd, you know, a
wrestling show. So interestingly, both of these concepts existed in the Muslim world. And these were
very popular pastimes, either to compete in these things or to watch these things. The other popular
sports were archery and polo, polo being both horse polo and elephant Polo. These were popular
		

			sports people used to competing or watch and remain so in many parts of the Muslim world,
particularly elephant polo and hospital. Now,
		

			the most popular board game in the Muslim world was chess. And we'll talk about this a bit more in
the next slide.
		

			Muslims love chess because it's a very strategic board game right to today. I myself personally, the
games I enjoy in terms of video games or board games as a strategy games, games that engage your
mind and test your mental abilities. It seems that historically, this is what Muslims love, they
love games that test their mental abilities and which requires strategy. So chess became the most
popular board game in the Muslim world. And so this is very curious. I find this really fascinating
because again, I grew up in a society and many of you may have as well where people tell us chess is
haram but it is a very popular belief in the Muslim world today. People see you playing chess they
		

			get very angry and they tell you things like you're playing with idols and this is haram and how can
you do this and the treated as if you are competency now drinking alcohol or gambling?
		

			Honestly, I've no idea where this originated from I have a theory about it, but no proof for that
theory, but reality is
		

			a drought our history. Very, very few scholars actually said haram about Yes, very, very few. Most
of them were silent about it, and many of them did say some things about it, but those statements
were misquoted. Right. What do you mean Muskogee? Well, for example, someone told me that Imam Malik
said the church is haram.
		

			But when I checked me when Mr. Malik's actual statement, he said I don't like it. That's all he
said. Or there's no good individual benefit in it.
		

			Now these kinds of statements doesn't mean he regards you as haram. He just he regarded as for him
personally for waste of time. So we can't take statements like this from scholars and say he means
It's haram. No. The whole amount of the past like Imam Malik Mr. Abu Hanifa Imam Shafi they were
very cautious about using the word haram. They will not use it until they were 100% convinced that
something haram otherwise they would make a general statement like I don't like it. It's not
beneficial is better to avoid it. But they will not say haram. Unlike us today we overuse this word
today we overuse the word haram everything we see we say haram. Haram means ALLAH has prohibited so
		

			unless you are 100% sure that in the Quran or Hadith Hala has prohibited this. Don't use the word
haram. Right. So there's a lot of this quotation regarding this issue. And much quotations even
though Hadith I mean, people say but it comes into at least HSC haram. This is baffling to me
because chess was invented about 400 years after the Prophet sallallahu the son passed away. So how
can you possibly be a hadith prohibiting it, it didn't even exist at the time. So I went into this,
I looked into it and I found two things. Number one, a lot of fabricated had thesis on this topic.
Right? I mean, perhaps the majority of her thesis stating that chested haram fabrications. But the
		

			few that people pointed out in Sahih Bukhari Sahih Muslim were completely mistranslated, the Arabic
does not include the word chess at all. Now it's talking about some other game that existed in the
time of the Prophet slaley Islam, which doesn't exist today. Right? So there's no English
translation for it, which was used for gambling, a form of gambling. And he's saying that specific
gambling based game era.
		

			He's not talking about chess, because chess did not exist at this time. So much quotation of Hadith
fabrication of Hadith. Most quotation of the scholars The reality is, there is no authentic evidence
to say that Jesus is haram. And throughout Muslim history, it was the single most popular pastime in
the Muslim world. Yes, you don't see any studies of Obama going and breaking the chessboard and
boycotting the chess games and, you know, telling people to be arrested for playing chess for
getting it banned from society. Nothing, nothing at all. In fact, even yesterday, that was a mapping
of playing chess, right? It was like a norm, a complete and total norm. So the point I'm getting at
		

			is once again, be careful with the word haram. Don't just say this is haram that is haram, research,
research, research, the Quran, the Hadith history, the exact words of the scholars don't just jump
into these factors, because many times these fatwas that people made up in the past 100 years,
fairly often, they really don't have a historical basis. I specifically noticed in the past 100 to
200 years, Muslims have been too quick to say this is haram or that is haram, even if the early
scholars never said any such thing. And you know, it's fascinating about the game of chess, is that
even the word we use today, checkmate has its origins in Persian Muslim culture. I mean, think about
		

			it, what does checkmate mean? It's not the English word. There's no real meaning to the word
checkmate. It's actually the anglicized form of the Persian and Arabic phrase, Shah. Mata Shah means
king, mother, those of you who know Arabic Mata means what Did Shah Mata The King is dead? You put
your bead in opposition with the king is trapped. And you say Shah, Marta, the king is dead. But
that's the end of the game. Right? And this got anglicized into the word checkmate. Fascinating.
Very, very fascinating. So what can we learn from this? I really hope you found this fascinating,
fascinating, as I said, I don't think anyone's done this before, tackle this part of our history,
		

			and showed how having fun was normal. Right? And so what this shows us is that our generation is
really really walked in our understanding of entertainment and our understanding of history. Right?
We have this idea that the Muslim world was just only are everywhere and they didn't just did he
bother all day and you know, Muslims should only worship Allah and having fun is haram and stuck
through that. How can you do fun things that this is not Islam. This is something that popped up in
the past 100 or 200 years, and it's really had a very negative impact on the ummah. We must
understand that Allah has only made haram, that which is bad for us. Everything else is halal.
		

			Right. One of the principles of Islam is that Allah wants life to be easy for us. Not difficult for
us. Right? You read a lobby Kemal usara wala you read the Quran also. This is in Surah Al Baqarah.
Allah subhanaw taala says when talking about fasting, Allah wants things to be easy for you. He does
not want things to be difficult for you. This verse
		

			has been taken by the scholars of Islam as the general principle of fake. Fake is meant to make life
easy for the Muslims. So when people come up with this new fake, where everything is haram, every
form of having fun is haram. They are going directly against one of the most fundamental of this
religion, which is it's supposed to make life easy for us. And these individuals are making life
very difficult for us. So we have to educate people. We have to educate people so that the religion
is easier for the next generation to practice. Because what's happened is many people in our
generation who were raised with a strict, overly strict everything is haram version of Islam. Many
		

			of these people left Islam, or they stopped practicing Islam and just remained Muslims by name. They
were chased away from the religion they were put off from the religion and religious people. You
know, we have a society today where some Muslims are so scary, so strict, so mean, so harsh, so
rough, so judgmental, that they make Islam look like this burdensome, scary, harsh religion that
you'll never be good enough for. And because of them, many other people run away from Islam. But the
reality is, this is not Islam. This is not what Islam teaches. This is not the Islam of Rasulullah
sallallahu alayhi wasallam. In the early Muslims, they were far more relaxed, far more easygoing,
		

			far more understanding, and they allowed people to live normal lives, the time of Rasulullah
Salallahu Salam at the sahaba. At the OMA years in the passage, the average Muslim would pray the
Salah, they would make sure the business is halal. They would take care of their families, but they
would go to work, they would have fun, they would hang out to their friends at the coffee shop. You
know, once coffee was invented, they would, you know, play board games with their friends, they
would do something fun with their families
		

			was far more chilled, far more chilled than the Islam that we have today. And so that's the lesson I
want you to take from this. Islam is not the strict scary burdensome. Everything is haram mindset
that some people have now that's the aim was understanding. Islam is what Allah has stated in the
Quran. And what Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam he Sahaba headstone had shown us in the
example and I hope that this helps you to understand that better. So let's take this and teach this
to our people and make this the dominant understanding of Islam in our times.