Music in Islam

# Music in Islam

![BGSU](/assets/bgsu.png)

### Christopher Witulski, Ph.D.

### College of Musical Arts

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# Music in Islam

* Debates about music in society
* Universal concern about music/musicians
  * Selling souls to the devil
  * Hiding fiddles in walls
* Demonstrates values related to music
  * Role, purpose, who is involved
* Aesthetics ≠ morality
  * Examples of good/bad taste?
  * Examples of good/bad morals?

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# Categories of value

* *Wajib/fard*: required
* *Mustahabb*: recommended
* *Mubah*: permitted
* *Makruh*: not recommended (hated)
* *Haram*: forbidden (sinful)
	* Intrinsically bad
	* Associated with bad stuff

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* Things that fall in each?
* Music that falls in each?

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# Hadith

## What is a hadith, again?

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* Page 90 examples:
	* "Allah has not sent a prophet except with a beautiful voice"
	* Muhammad asks for a frame drum at a wedding
	* "[Allah] sent me to annihilate the string instruments and the mizmars"
	* "Leave them [the musicians] alone for these are feast days"

## Do these ideas about music sound familiar?

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# Debate continues

* You hear horror stories about Taliban controlled Afghanistan, under ISIS, etc.
* The question usually falls into politics (Iran before and after the revolution)
	* It does not demonstrate a universality of thought

## Music is powerful

* Does music bring you closer to the spiritual? Further?
  * What's the difference?
* Deborah Kapchan's "festival sacred"

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# Music and faith

* Celebrating religion in the mussem
  * Holidays, pilgrimages, saint-day celebrations
  * We'll see this later in Morocco, but it's common elsewhere
* Dhikr as a mode for transcendence
  * Video example from a festival in 2006 (Sufi nights clip)
* Dhikr is not music
  * Another repetitive recitation: prayer beads (tasbih)

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class: middle, center

### "Tasbih of Fatima" by Saad Al Qureshi

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# Music and faith

## "Everything in life has two sides" (Kadry Sorour, nay player, page 92)

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### Ruby: "Leh Beydary Keda"

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# Lines are not always clear

* Metaphor in Sufi poetry
  * Wine, love, passion, and ecstasy
  * Experience, metaphor, metaphysics within Sufi cosmology
* Obvious openings for criticism...

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### Ghazal 3154, Rumi

Top of the morning, you're already smashed  
oh yes you are! You tied your turban crooked.  
Today your eyes look shot, all glazed over  
I think you drank a hundred proof last night  
Light of our lives and light of our hearts!  
Salutations to you! How are you feeling?

You imbibed and traveled to the heavens  
got yourself sotted and broke all bonds  
The face of reason always freezes hearts  
The face of love turns all heads giddy  
You got sotted, started wrestling lions   
Wine-suckled, rode bare-back on a lion's neck  
Like an old shaykh the aged wine guided you  
Go now, freed from the ancient spinning wheel.

Sāqi, you hold truth and justice on your side  
refusing worship to all things but wine  
You've borne away our reason  
but this time carry us away  
like we'll never go again.

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### Sami Yusef: "You came to me"

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# Music in Islam

![BGSU](/assets/bgsu.png)

### Christopher Witulski, Ph.D.

### College of Musical Arts