Recordings › Monday Nights with Mufti #201| Q&A Unscripted & Unrestricted! 😉 | Mufti Abu Layth · 9 Feb 2021 › Segment 36 of 37
Is it haram to flip a coin to make a decision?
muftis haraam forbidden nikah nikkah nikaah nikah nama nikahnamaIs flipping a coin to decide things haram? Reason, not chance or dreams
Most recent answer on Dreams and visions7 earlier answers on this topic, oldest 2018 ↓Watch the answer
Open on YouTube at 3:16:17The player starts at 3:16:17, where the answer begins.
This segment3:16:17 to 3:22:43 · 6 min 26 sGeneral teaching
The answer in brief
machinesummary, machine-writtenMufti Abu Layth says flipping a coin is not haram, but important decisions should be made by reasoning, not by a coin or a dream.
In more detail
A chat question asks whether flipping coins to decide things is haram. Mufti Abu Layth says it is not haram and is fine for trivial choices, but that important decisions should be reasoned through, so that if they go wrong one at least bears responsibility for a considered choice. Mufti criticises people who decide on marriage by waiting for a dream, asking whether they would choose a career or manage their money that way. He tells of a former colleague at a school who admitted she took a job she came to hate because she liked the trees on the road leading to it.
Question as read aloud · questioner not identifiedIs flipping coins to decide things haram?
Position stated
Mufti Abu Layth says flipping coins is not haram.
“no it's not haram flipping coins um clear shukran for the stars it's not haram to flip coins but i would say look”
Category: ruling
Kind: general teachingTranscript
machine3:16:17 to 3:22:43 · click a time to seek · dotted terms open the glossary
if you want to challenge then yours truly is sitting here for the challenge but yeah people let's uh let's wrap this up it's gone on quite a while uh some amazing discussions it's been very enjoyable uh i don't think did i were there any questions is flipping coins to decide things haram no it's not haram flipping coins um clear shukran for the stars it's not haram to flip coins but i would say look uh sure if it helps you in certain
things but if the decisions are important in life if you're about to you know if it's just something like oh shall i watch this today or shall i watch that let me flip a coin i mean that's not really important um you know whether you on these kind of things it doesn't matter if the thing is of any significance then i would say look just hold stop that for a moment just reason it what do you want to do what would you like to do what would you think would be the better thing to do
and then have to work and just do it charge through it you understand don't because look even you know you know because if things go pear-shaped you know [ __ ] it's the fun at least you you did this based on what you felt was right at the time and you may have been wrong it happens in life you know i may have thought oh that that was the thing to do and it was wrong tj you know you bear the responsibility
it may be saddening but but it will be much sadder still that you made a great choice based on just a random flip of a coin you know these choices deserve because if that's your attitude towards great things then you deserve to be a fool and treated like a fool when these things happen you know you get people who will base marriage on a dream you know all the lack of it yeah i want to marry someone let me let me watch let me see if i can have a dream abe you know this is not is this how you
determine things in life you you try and have a dream over it i mean you don't influence you don't i mean you influence but you don't have control over your dreams why don't you base this on reason i mean imagine you did everything else in life like that what career should i choose i know i'll have a dream [Laughter] you know how should i take care of my money i know i'll have a dream [Laughter] this
dream master right this this is not how things are done in life reason it even if you get it wrong you bear the brunt of it tk you can say look fair enough i got it you know it didn't work out how i wanted but at the time i thought about it i made a calculated guess and i did and you know sometimes things don't work out many occasions they do but you won't think oh you know i was so dumb i just drank some hot chocolate and went to sleep and had a dream and i thought okay i'm going to do this now
people do some crazy stuff you know sometimes i remember when when i used to be teaching i was at a school once outside of birmingham in warsaw uh i was in this school it was called joseph leckie i was there for a little while and there was this teacher there yes she was uh this lady she was our kind of um superior there's in in the head of department so she hated this place she absolutely hated it and and i i think she left soon after as
well but really weird as well this person you know very kind of uh like almost bipolar in behavior like just suddenly flip you think whoa okay but anyway i remember once she she was going on about how she hates being here and this was such a bad choice and and i asked her well why out of curiosity why did you join then well i mean why'd you take this this job because she was like you know when when i had when i took this job i had an opportunity i could have taken these other places i wish i took them you know they would have worked out so much better and so on and
and i said well okay why did you take this place so she said well what it was she said okay the truth the truth huh because the truth is you know the drive here when you're driving down and there's that road this major road that comes before it has these uh these kind of like tall trees i think like cypress kind of trees these it has like these the this this these nice trees not the school but this road main road leading up to the road that goes to the school so i said yeah and she said well i
really liked that [Laughter] so it's amazing what what does it for people you know you would i bet even the school wouldn't know why like they could never be able to predict that so this is it you know people amazingly amusing huh guys let's wrap this up uh do um do look out for i will be sharing a
video as soon as i we launched the discord the the membership discord app so the server i will there's a small video that i will release as well just highlighting it that is for memberships it's an exclusivity and offers different things according to what people are on there whether it will be certain uh maybe certain courses certain things that are on there already they will be kind of provided there will be a obviously the chat forum the reservoir people the reservoir that's what it's called the chat forum on the and the sanctuary for actual um live voice channel for
Paragraphs overlapping 3:16:17 to 3:22:43. 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 2021-02-09-S36, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/l4n4wd2jjps/s/36/ (accessed 1 November 2026)
- APA 7
Mufti Abu Layth. (2021, February 9). Is it haram to flip a coin to make a decision? [Video, segment 2021-02-09-S36, auto-transcribed, may contain errors]. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Retrieved November 1, 2026, from https://muftiabulayth.org/r/l4n4wd2jjps/s/36/
- Chicago author-date
Mufti Abu Layth. 2021. "Is it haram to flip a coin to make a decision?" Video, segment 2021-02-09-S36, auto-transcribed, may contain errors. Mufti Abu Layth Archive. Recorded February 9, 2021. Accessed November 1, 2026. https://muftiabulayth.org/r/l4n4wd2jjps/s/36/
- BibTeX
@misc{abulayth-2021-02-09-S36, author = {Mufti Abu Layth}, title = {{Is it haram to flip a coin to make a decision?}}, year = {2021}, month = {2}, date = {2021-02-09}, howpublished = {\url{https://muftiabulayth.org/r/l4n4wd2jjps/s/36/}}, url = {https://muftiabulayth.org/r/l4n4wd2jjps/s/36/}, organization = {Mufti Abu Layth Archive}, urldate = {2026-11-01}, note = {Segment 2021-02-09-S36, auto-transcribed, may contain errors} }
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