the soul is left with an aversion to it and is distracted from it. This is like someone who occupies himself with studying the Torah, the Gospel, and the learning of the People of the Book and the Sabians, drawing knowledge and wisdom from them, and thereby turning away from Allah’s Book and the Sunnah of His Messenger to other matters too lengthy to detail. Since such listening does not in itself impart the spiritual states and knowledge that Allah and His Messenger love—and may instead obstruct them and impart what Allah and His Messenger do not love, or even what they hate—neither Allah nor His Messenger, nor the early generations of this community nor its foremost spiritual teachers, commanded it.

One subtle point here is that sound affects the soul through its beauty: sometimes it brings joy, sometimes sorrow, sometimes anger, and sometimes contentment. When its effect becomes strong, it intoxicates the spirit, which then experiences an exhilarating pleasure without discernment. Something similar happens to the soul when it becomes intoxicated through dancing, and also to the body when it becomes intoxicated through food and drink. For intoxication is an exhilaration that produces pleasure without reason. The benefit afforded by that pleasure cannot compensate for the resulting loss of reason, which hinders remembrance of Allah and prayer and breeds enmity and hatred.

“In short,” a believer must know that the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, left nothing that brings one nearer to Paradise without speaking of it, nor anything that keeps one away from