Fatwa ID: 05812
Answered by: Shaykh Ahmed bin Mohamed Umarji
Question:
How did the salaf view musical instruments (stringed, winged, percussion except for duff and tabl)?
Abdal Ghani al-Nablusi has stated several narrations in his book which demonstrates that salaf approved music. how authentic are those narrations?
In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful
Answer to the First Question:
The Hanafi Jurists hold the position that musical instruments are impermissible with the exception of the duff. The permissibility of the duff is restricted to those occasions that we find in the ahadeeth such as the two Eids and weddings.1
For more statements and the different opinions of the salaf, please see (https://darul-ilm.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Musical-instruments-Dissertation.pdf)
Answer to the Second Question:
There are such narrations found in Abd al-Ghanī al-Nābulsī’s ‘Īḍāḥ al-Dalālāt fi Samāʿ al-Ālāt. A point of undue importance is that not all the narrations mentioned there are authentic and acceptable, as proficient as the author may have been in the Islamic sciences. Many of them contain unknown, weak or dubious narrators within the chains of narration. Some are not even connected, upon inspection; containing hundreds of years between one narrator and the next.2
Only Allah knows best
Written by Shaykh Ahmed bin Mohamed Umarji
Checked and approved by Mufti Mohammed Tosir Miah
Darul Ifta Birmingham
1 Fatawa Darul Uloom Zakariyyah, Page 269, Volume 7
2 A Critical Overview Regarding the Ruling of Musical Instruments as seen by Scholars of Islam (https://darul-ilm.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Musical-instruments-Dissertation.pdf)
