—called shatranj (chess) pieces idols. Passing by a group who were playing it, he said, “What are these images to which you are so devoted?!” and he overturned the board on them (1)(2).

No Companion is known to have declared chess permissible or to have played it; Allah spared them from that. Every report that attributes the game to any of them—such as Abu Hurayrah—is a sheer fabrication and slander against the Companions, rejected by every scholar of their lives and by every student of the transmitted reports.

How could the best of generations—the noblest of all people after the Messenger of Allah ﷺ—deem it lawful (3) to play (4) something whose distraction from the remembrance of Allah and from prayer, once a player is absorbed in it, is even greater than that caused by wine? Reality itself bears witness to this.

How could the Lawgiver forbid nard (backgammon) yet permit chess, when chess is many times more harmful?

And how could anyone imagine that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ and his Companions would allow the gambling of the non-Arabs when it is more detested by Allah and His Messenger ﷺ than the gambling of the Arabs? Indeed, chess is a tyrant—