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Recordings › Is Music Haram? | Mufti Abu Layth · 4 Aug 2019 › Segment 1 of 1

machine

Is music haram in Islam?

muftis haraam forbidden

Music is not haram: sound, vibration and music therapy

QuestionSource not recorded · questioner not identifiedAnswered 4 Aug 2019From the Mind of a MuftiSegment 1 of 1 in the recording2019-08-04b-S01

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This segment0:00 to 2:39 · 2 min 39 sGeneral teaching

The answer in brief

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No: he says music is not haram and is arguably nourishment for the soul, pointing to its use for healing in medieval Muslim hospitals.

In more detail

The clip begins with Mufti Abu Layth saying that music is not haram and is arguably the nourishment of the soul. He reflects that if string theory is true the essence of everything is vibration, and says sound has no physical reality of its own but is the interaction between waves in the air and an organism that interprets them, which he says answers the old question of the tree falling in an empty forest. He adds that medieval Muslim hospitals (bimaristans [?]) used music therapy and that music helps some people with neurodegenerative illnesses, and asks how it could be haram.

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Is music haram?

  • The question was reconstructed from Mufti Abu Layth's restatement; the questioner's own words are not in the recording
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Position stated

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Mufti Abu Layth says music is not haram and is arguably the nourishment of the soul.

In his words

“music is not Haram music is arguably it is the nourishment of the soul okay and you can see the reality to that”

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Transcript

machine0:00 to 2:39 · click a time to seek · dotted terms open the glossary
0:00

not people why not music is not Haram music is arguably it is the nourishment of the soul okay and you can see the reality to that it's amazing what certain sound waves can do and I feel in some ways that it's amazing that if if things like string theory be true if it hasn't been it's it's it can't be tested

0:37

yet but if string theory be true then the essence of everything is simply vibrations it's amazing that these vibrations you see because sound doesn't actually exist people sound is an interaction there's no such thing as sound it doesn't have a physical kind of reality to it sound is the interaction between waves a waves sound waves which

1:15

are simply just waves in the air and an organism that interprets those waves so that that kind of also solves the age-old question that if a tree falls in the forest and nobody's there to observe it does it make a sound no it doesn't make a sound because the sound doesn't actually have a reality to it there is no actual thing a sound in that sense it's a waves being measured by an organism being not just measured sorry

1:53

interpreted and received by an organism so and and the fact that music can actually heal people and many Muslims during the medieval times they had in the hospitals marathons they used column they had music therapy as a healing kind of mechanism and people that are sometimes you know suffering from certain neuronal degenerative illnesses you can find that music helps them it actually helps in

2:29

the brain how could this be Haram how could that be at all it makes no sense whatsoever

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Cite this segment

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Mufti Abu Layth Archive, segment 2019-08-04b-S01, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/k9v9am16g1k/s/1/ (accessed 1 November 2026)

APA 7 
Mufti Abu Layth. (2019, August 4). Is music haram in Islam? [Video, segment 2019-08-04b-S01, auto-transcribed, may contain errors]. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Retrieved November 1, 2026, from https://muftiabulayth.org/r/k9v9am16g1k/s/1/
Chicago author-date 
Mufti Abu Layth. 2019. "Is music haram in Islam?" Video, segment 2019-08-04b-S01, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Recorded August 4, 2019. Accessed November 1, 2026. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/k9v9am16g1k/s/1/
BibTeX 
@misc{abulayth-2019-08-04b-S01,
  author = {Mufti Abu Layth},
  title = {{Is music haram in Islam?}},
  year = {2019},
  month = {8},
  date = {2019-08-04},
  howpublished = {\url{https://muftiabulayth.org/r/k9v9am16g1k/s/1/}},
  url = {https://muftiabulayth.org/r/k9v9am16g1k/s/1/},
  organization = {Mufti Abu Layth Archive},
  urldate = {2026-11-01},
  note = {Segment 2019-08-04b-S01, auto-transcribed, may contain errors}
}
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