music that is not provocative—that is, singing.

I say: This restriction is purely theoretical, unworkable in practice, for what stirs a person’s instincts differs according to temperament—male or female, old or young, hot-blooded or cool-natured—as any discerning observer knows.

By Allah, I am genuinely astonished at how these Azhari shaykhs keep reiterating this abstract condition. In doing so they oppose the authentic hadiths and the positions of the four Imams and the early generations, yet invent rationales of their own that none of the followed authorities ever articulated—rationales whose effect is to declare lawful the very forms of singing and music that they themselves admit are forbidden. Take one example: a man may have a wife, sons, and daughters—Shaykh al-Ghazali, for instance, who openly, even proudly, states that he listens to Umm Kulthūm, the musician Muhammad ʿAbd al-Wahhab, and the like. His children, and perhaps even his students—as he himself relates in some of his writings—see him doing so. Are these youngsters, with their limited knowledge and adolescent impulses, capable of distinguishing between provocative music so they stop their ears against it, or will they simply continue to listen? By Allah, such “jurisprudence” could only come from a rigid, hateful literalist or from a follower of caprice who lacks sound judgment.

This calls to mind the Hanafi distinction between wine produced from grapes—which they hold to be absolutely forbidden, whether in small or large amounts—and wine produced from other sources, such as dates, of which only the large, intoxicating quantity is prohibited in their view.1

And how, in practice, is one to differentiate between the small, non-intoxicating amount and the large, intoxicating amount, and whether