and your flaunting of musical instruments and the reed-pipe is an innovation in Islam. I was on the verge of sending someone to shear your forelock in a most disgraceful manner.”

Al-Nasāʾī recorded this in his Sunan 2/178, and Abū Nuʿaym in Ḥilyat al-Awliyāʾ 5/270 with a sound chain. Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam cites it at length in Sīrat ʿUmar, pp. 154–157, while Abū Nuʿaym also narrated it in greatly abridged form in 5/309.

It is therefore no wonder that he likewise wrote to his children’s tutor, ordering him to raise them upon detesting frivolous pastimes and musical instruments. Abū Ḥafṣ al-Umawī, ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd Allah1, said:

ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz wrote to the tutor of his children, instructing him to instill in them hatred of musical instruments:

“Let the very first thing they imbibe from your instruction be aversion to those amusements whose beginning is from Satan and whose end is the wrath of the All-Merciful. Trusted scholars have informed me that attending gatherings where instruments are played, listening to songs, and being absorbed in them causes hypocrisy to sprout in the heart just as grass sprouts when watered. By my life, guarding against that by avoiding such venues is easier for a person of insight than harbouring hypocrisy within his heart.”

Ibn Abī al-Dunyā recorded this in Dhamm al-Malāhī, fol. 6/1, and through his chain Abū ’l-Faraj Ibn al-Jawzī cited it on p. 250. The statement that “singing makes hypocrisy grow” has in fact been authentically established.