Recordings › Monday Nights with Mufti #202| Q&A Unscripted & Unrestricted! 😉 | Mufti Abu Layth · 16 Feb 2021 › Segment 35 of 57

Is playing chess haram?

malik ibn anas malik bin anas imam maalik imam malik ibn anas imaam imams prayer leader fatwa fatwah fatwaa fataawa legal opinion muftis haraam forbidden makruh makrooh makruh tahrimi makruh tanzihi sahabah sahaba sahabi sahabiyyah sahabiyat

Is chess haram in Imam Malik's view? No; he disliked time-wasting

QuestionLive chat · questioner not identifiedAnswered 16 Feb 2021Monday Nights with Mufti Abu Layth Segment 35 of 57 in the recording2021-02-16-S35

Play from 1:51:49 The video loads from YouTube only when you press play. Click a time in the transcript to seek.

Watch the answer

Open on YouTube at 1:51:49

The player starts at 1:51:49, where the answer begins.

This segment1:51:49 to 1:53:05 · 1 min 16 sGeneral teaching

The answer in brief

machinesummary, machine-written

No, chess is not haram, he says; Imam Malik discouraged it as a waste of life but never called it haram.

In more detail

Asked whether Imam Malik held chess haram, given that chess came to the Muslims after the conquest of Persia, Mufti Abu Layth says playing chess is not haram. He says chess was not played in the Prophet's society but was introduced in the time of the companions, who discussed it, some in favour and some against. He says al-Shatibi in al-Muwafaqat goes through Imam Malik's fatwas on chess: Malik discouraged it because he saw people wasting their lives on it, but never called it haram, which he compares to someone today rebuking time spent on TV series or computer games that are not haram.

Question as read aloud · questioner not identified
Is it true that in Imam Malik's view playing chess is haram? I thought chess was introduced to the Muslim world after the conquest of Persia.

Position stated

correctedChecked by two independent reviews, not by the channel

Mufti Abu Layth says playing chess is not haram.

In his words

“no playing chess is not haram um yeah chess wasn't there in the time of the prophet not amongst the immediate arabs”

▶ 1:51:49 Open on YouTube at 1:51:49

Category: ruling

Report an error

Kind: general teaching

Transcript

machine1:51:49 to 1:53:05 · click a time to seek · dotted terms open the glossary

1:51:09

you're going to get just tons of them lazy and but so these are lazy and you'll get a lot of these uh that will move back and forth muhammad uh what even they will move between baghdad and basra sometimes but there was a strong representation uh mufti is it true in imam malik's playing chess is haram i thought chess was introduced to the muslim world after the conquest of persia

1:51:48

no playing chess is not haram um yeah chess wasn't there in the time of the prophet not amongst the immediate arabs um so i'm not saying he wasn't there in the world but in the prophet society people didn't play chess but in the time of the companions it was introduced so there's a lot of discussions that the companions have over chess some in favor some against but it's not haram the there are some fatal in the in the muaffakat of imam ashatabhi he goes through imam alex fatawa on chess and things and

1:52:26

why imam malik discouraged disliked these kind of things you see because he saw people just wasting their lives in it and obviously this was not he never said it's haram but he kind of like rebuked it and but that was his personality it's like today people watching tv series or you know playing computer games or doing these things are not haram but some people you know it's not from their temperament to you know they kind of see this as you know why are you wasting your life so that's how imam malik was

Paragraphs overlapping 1:51:49 to 1:53:05. Full text on the recording page.

Cite this segment

Stable id, transcript version and tier are part of the citation. Every change to a transcript is logged.

Mufti Abu Layth Archive, segment 2021-02-16-S35, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/--pntsar8ck/s/35/ (accessed 1 November 2026)

APA 7

Mufti Abu Layth. (2021, February 16). Is playing chess haram? [Video, segment 2021-02-16-S35, auto-transcribed, may contain errors]. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Retrieved November 1, 2026, from https://muftiabulayth.org/r/--pntsar8ck/s/35/

Chicago author-date

Mufti Abu Layth. 2021. "Is playing chess haram?" Video, segment 2021-02-16-S35, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Recorded February 16, 2021. Accessed November 1, 2026. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/--pntsar8ck/s/35/

BibTeX

@misc{abulayth-2021-02-16-S35,
  author = {Mufti Abu Layth},
  title = {{Is playing chess haram?}},
  year = {2021},
  month = {2},
  date = {2021-02-16},
  howpublished = {\url{https://muftiabulayth.org/r/--pntsar8ck/s/35/}},
  url = {https://muftiabulayth.org/r/--pntsar8ck/s/35/},
  organization = {Mufti Abu Layth Archive},
  urldate = {2026-11-01},
  note = {Segment 2021-02-16-S35, auto-transcribed, may contain errors}
}

Something wrong here?

Tell us what is wrong and it will be checked against the recording. Nothing changes until a person has reviewed it.

Sending a note needs JavaScript, which is off or unavailable in this browser. Nothing has been sent.

No name, email address or account is asked for or stored, and the inbox does not store your IP address. For rate limiting it keeps an unreadable fingerprint of your connection for 48 hours, and our database provider's own logs record connections as every website's do. Only your note, its kind, the page and the moment in the recording are kept, for review.