—one group inclined to listen and found nothing in it that impinged on the religion, such as al-Hasan al-Basri.
Another group disliked it, regarding it as incompatible with asceticism and scrupulous piety, like al-Shaʿbi.
In any case, it is agreed that as long as it neither arouses sexual desire nor distracts from the remembrance of Allah and from prayer, it contains nothing that harms the religion.

I say: At that time I wrote a rebuttal of this fatwa, since it clashes with the sound hadiths and the position of the majority of scholars. I sent it to the magazine, but its publication was apparently prevented when the journal was shut down under ʿAbd al-Nasir.

Although brief, this fatwa contains such a variety of errors and misconceptions that I would never have imagined the Shaykh—whose stature I deemed above such slips—could fall into them. I must therefore point them out, as concisely as possible, except where fuller discussion is indispensable to the topic of this treatise. I say:

Songs and Music:

1. The basis for prohibiting singing lies in the authentic hadiths recorded in the books of the Sunnah, as will be detailed and authenticated by scholars later in this treatise. Is the Shaykh—one of al-Azhar’s senior scholars—unaware of them, or is he ignoring them like some of his pupils do, as will be shown? Either alternative is bitter.

2. The restriction he invented on his own authority—namely, that it must not excite sexual desire—has been imitated by some of his students, such as Shaykh al-Qaradawi, al-Ghazali, and others. The first of them declared explicitly, as will be quoted from him in this introduction: “There is no objection to it being accompanied by music that is not …”