with them and keeps their company will not have his claim to be free of such things accepted. For either he joins them in committing forbidden acts and neglecting obligations, or he condones their wrongdoing, neither enjoining what is right nor forbidding what is wrong.

In either case, he deserves punishment. A case involving people drinking wine was brought before ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, who ordered that they receive the prescribed punishment of flogging. He was asked, “What about the man among them who is fasting?”

He replied, “Begin with the fasting man and flog him. Has he not heard the words of Allah Most High:

‘He has already revealed to you in the Book that when you hear Allah’s verses being denied and ridiculed, do not sit with them until they turn to another topic’?”

And His words, exalted is He:

“If Satan should cause you to forget, then once you remember, do not sit with the wrongdoing people.”

“Those who fear Allah are not accountable for them in any way, but must give a reminder, so that they may fear Him.”

He, glorified is He, thus forbade sitting with wrongdoers. What, then, of keeping their company? And what of taking them as close friends?

These people have abandoned gambling with their hands, being incapable of it, and have instead opened the door to gambling with their tongues. Gambling with the tongue is more destructive to reason and religion than gambling with the hands. Muslims must punish these people severely, shun them, and call upon them to repent. Indeed, even supposing a man composed these Arabic vernacular poems without exaggeration, he would be forbidden to do so—even if he composed them on subjects other than love.

For sometimes they compose them with expressions of disbelief in Allah, His Book, and His Messenger, as Abū al-Hasan al-Tustarī composed them on “the oneness of existence” and the claim that the Creator is the creation. At other times, they compose them on sinful themes, as do these wayward, foolish, openly sinful people.

Even supposing a poet composed these vernacular poems about the location of a shop, he would be forbidden to do so, for they corrupt the Arabic tongue and turn it into objectionable non-Arabic speech.