Fiona Heights :
:*Music in Islam*
There is fiqh on this issue, but there is no ijmaʿ.
Scholars like Imaam al-Ghazali, Ibn Hazm, and others allowed forms of music, and Muslim societies for centuries had music, poetry, and instruments.
This music was the ethos is Islam.
Historically, most jurists treated music as disputed (often makruh, not outright haram).
It was never a settled issue.
A lot of the stricter opinions came from scholars who were obsessed with looking different from non-Muslims, especially in certain political and cultural contexts, and that shaped their conclusions.
What Wahhabism did was freeze one side of this debate, strip it of context, and turn it into a marker of “pure Islam.”
It crystallized a disputed opinion into dogma. An extremist view.
Before the Saudi-Wahhabi project, debates were still ongoing. It was a matter of Ikthilaaf. A respected difference of opinion based on fiqh.
After state power got involved, discussion basically ended and one minority view was enforced.
That’s the real difference between classical fiqh disagreement and Wahhabi rigidity and extremism.
2026-02-11 18:35:11