Why Islam forbids music

On April 10, President APJ Abdul Kalam was presenting the Indian Music Academy awards to maestros like Ali Akbar Khan, Dr Balamurali Krishna, Girija Devi, Asha Bhonsle and Illyaraja (music director) at a function at New Delhi. While speaking to the audience, Honourable President said, “The nation is grateful to various exponents of music in India for the great contribution you are making in preserving music and promoting unity of minds among the billions of people of this nation of multi-religion, multi-culture and multi-language”. He also said, “Indeed music is a great integrator of minds of people of Indian origin settled in various parts of the planet”. While our President was speaking all these words to praise and encourage music, he perhaps overlooked the fact that the religious creed he follows, forbids music.

Nearly 10 days later, the cleric Maulana Abdul Ajiz of famous Lal Masjid in Peshawar, Pakistan ,issued a Fatwa to enforce Sharia (Islamic Law) immediately in Pakistan and declared any kind musical pursuit, including singing and dancing, un-Islamic. He asked Pakistani singers and dancers to go to India and perform their arts there. His fatwa also promulgated that doing business in any thing related to music is un-Islamic and asked people who are running shops of audio and video CDs and tapes, to close their shops. As a consequence of these religious Fatwas, a group of fanatics blew off 3 shops in Swabi, a small town at about 100 km north-west of Peshawar.

A question naturally arises – Why Islam forbids music? In fact, Islam forbids, not only music but any kind of artistic pursuit like singing, playing musical instruments, dancing, drawing pictures, sculpting figures and so on, including even photography. To get into the root of this Islamic attitude towards music, one has to delve into the matter a bit. At the onset, it should be made clear that the creed of Islam has nothing to do with spiritualism and its ultimate goal is to turn the entire world into an Islamic empire, either by converting or by eliminating the entire population of non-Muslim kafirs and jihad is the means to achieve that goal. Hence jihad, the military component of Islam, is the greatest virtue of the creed. It is therefore compulsory participate in jihad to win a victory over the world of non-Muslims.

Islamic scholars agree that, jihad is the best form of worship in Islam, better than even pilgrimage to Mecca or hajj not to mention lower merits like prayer (namaz) or fasting (roza). So Allah makes jihad compulsory for every able Muslim and says, “Fighting against the kafirs is beyond one’s personal likings and dislikings as Allah has commanded to fight the pagans and all those who ascribe partners (shirk) with Allah” (Koran-2.216). “Go on fighting against them till the rule of Allah is not established (Koran-8.39).” And In plain words, jihad means indiscriminate killing of kafirs, plundering their wealth, occupying their land and other properties by sword, fire and rape.

Almighty Allah, to inspire the Muslims to participate in jihad, or wage war against the non-Muslim kafirs, has made war booty (or the property or wealth of the kafirs occupied by robbery and loot) legal for the jihadis.  The non-Muslim women captured in jihad are also war booty and Allah has permitted every Muslim to have sex with non-Muslim women of any age or of any status. So jihad stands for  indiscriminate killing of non-Muslim kafirs, looting their properties, raping their women in front of their kins, chopping off their breasts, maiming the kafir males and chopping off their genitals, smashing their children on stones or cutting them into pieces in front of their parents, or in short, mounting any kind of  extremely barbaric and beastly torture on kafirs.

So it becomes evident that the intention of Islam is to turn every Muslim into a cruel beast, a brute killer. Or to turn into a cruel beast that will not hesitate to do any type cruelty or brutality on the non-Muslim kafirs. And more importantly, he will not feel any repentance or any sense of guilt, for committing such violent atrocities on the kafirs. A few examples may make the point clear. To narrate the barbarity committed on the Hindus in Bangladesh during the War of Liberation in 1971, Mr. Anwar Shaikh, in the Preface of his book This is Jihad, writes, “Brutalities committed on Hindus in East Bengal in 1971 are without parallel in human history. In many cases a whole community was encircled. Mothers and daughters were raped on mass scale, in presence of brothers and fathers. Breasts of elderly ladies were chopped off. Pregnant women were disemboweled, children’s heads were smashed on the floor. Then followed chopping off of genitals, gouging out of eyes, and finally, chopping off of heads of male members. As a grand climax everybody was put in a house and the house was set on fire.”

 In 1360 AD., Firoz Shah Tughlaq invaded Orissa and desecrated the temple of Lord Jagannath and threw the idol in the Bay of Bengal. On his return journey, when he was passing through Jajnagar, it was brought to his knowledge that nearly 120,000 Hindus had taken shelter at an offshore island. Firoz Shah then went to that island with his men and butchered those 120,000 Hindus on a single day.

Ulugh Khan (later on Sultan Ghiasuddin Balban), when he was serving sultan Nassiruddin (brother of Sultana Rizia) as a commander, went to the Gahrwal, on the foot hill of the Himalayas, and promised his men that he would reward them with one rupee for bringing the head of a slain Hindu and two rupees for bringing a Hindu alive. Like hungry dogs his army set out for the hunt of kafir Hindus. The massacre went on for three long weeks and several hundreds of thousands of Hindus were slain. Ulugh Khan then built high-rise bastions with the heads of the slain Hindus.

When Maharana Sangram Singh was defeated in the battle of Khanau, Babar ordered general massacre, and his chief commander Mohammadi and other commanders massacred 1,00,000 Rajput prisoners of war and another 1,00,000 civilian Hindus. Such large scale slaughter of Hindus went on unabated during the entire period of Muslim rule that lasted for about 700 years.

A press report on 22^nd April says that a Pakistani boy of 12, trained by Taliban leaders, has beheaded a man suspected to be a spy of George Bush, the US President, in a remote village on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan, near Peshawar. The report also says that the boy has done the job with the simple knife and while denouncing the blind-folded spy with his high pitched voice. After severing head of the victim, the boy cried out, “Allahu Akbar”.

After the Battle of Panipat on 5^th November, 1556, when the defeated Emperor Vikramaditya Hemraj (a.k.a. Himu) was brought before Akbar, hardly a boy of 14, his guardian Bairam Khan asked Akbar to behead  Himu, so that he could earn the title of Ghazi (slayer of infidel). The boy readily smote Himu on the neck and beheaded the already half-dead victim with his scimitar. These two examples are sufficient to show what Islam wants every Muslim to turn into.

But it is evident that a soft hearted man is utterly unsuitable for such barbaric and beastly acts and Islam forbids music because music, or pursuit of any form of art, softens one’s heart.