So you would see among them nothing but souls drunk with delight—yet delight itself there remained fully awake.
Whenever the companion of pleasures called within that gathering, amusement answered, “Come, let liberality flow!”
We owned nothing but our very lives, and we squandered them for the glances of graceful beauties.

One of the spiritually aware once said, “Listening to music breeds hypocrisy in some people, obstinacy in others, lying in others, debauchery in others, and foolishness in still others.” He then added, “Song corrupts the heart, and when the heart is corrupted, hypocrisy surges within it.”

In short, when a discerning person reflects on the condition of the devotees of song and the condition of those devoted to remembrance and the Quran, he comes to appreciate the acumen of the Companions and their mastery of the diseases of the heart and their cures. Success is from Allah alone.

I say: Once the wisdom behind the prohibition of song becomes clear from the foregoing reports—namely, that it distracts from obedience to Allah and from His remembrance, and this is plain to see—then everyone who is diverted by it, whether performer or listener, receives a share of the censure mentioned in the noble verse, “And among the people are those who purchase idle talk so that they may lead others away from the path of Allah…” each according to the extent of his distraction, whether little or much. You have learned that “purchase” here means “to exchange” and “to prefer.” Take careful note as well that the lām in Allah’s words li-yuḍilla (“so that he may lead astray”) is the lām of consequence, as al-Wāḥidī explains in his Tafsīr—meaning that his affair ends up in misguidance—just as Ibn al-Jawzī states in al-Zād 6/317. It is not a lām of purpose, as some claim, though that sense is plausible with regard to the disbelievers who make a mockery of the signs of Allah. For that reason Ibn al-Qayyim, may Allah have mercy on him, 1/240, said: