Introduction
All praise is due to Allah; we praise Him, seek His help and His forgiveness, and we seek refuge in Allah from the evil within ourselves and from our misdeeds. Whomever Allah guides, none can mislead, and whomever He allows to stray, none can guide. I testify that there is no god but Allah alone with no partner, and I testify that Muhammad is His servant and messenger.

To continue: In 1373 AH I came across, in the Egyptian magazine al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun, issue 11 dated 29 Dhu al-Qaʿdah of that same year, a request for a legal ruling on music and singing which read:

“I am a young Muslim, I perform the prescribed acts of worship and am very sincere, yet something possesses my heart: a love of music and singing, even though I have memorised the Quran. Is this pastime forbidden?”

Shaykh Muhammad Abu Zahrah—may Allah preserve him—answered as follows:

“With regard to singing, provided it contains nothing that arouses sexual desire, we see no cause to prohibit it. The Arabs used to chant rajaz, sing, and beat the duff, and in certain reports there is an explicit encouragement to strike the duff at weddings. It has even been said, ‘The distinction between what is lawful and what is unlawful is the duff.’ The same applies to music. We also find that when Persian singing with its melodies entered during the era of the Successors, people divided into two groups: