Majlis: Are music and art truly ḥarām or did we get that wrong?

Scholars present: Imam al-Ghazālī, Ibn ʿArabī

You: Are music and art truly ḥarām or did we get that wrong?

🕌 Imam al-Ghazālī: Look, I spent years in seclusion wrestling with this, and I’m telling you: the qalb (heart) is like a mirror that music simply polishes. If the song stirs a base desire, it’s poison, but if it awakens shawq (longing) for the Divine, how could it be forbidden? In my Iḥyā’, I argued that anyone not moved by the spring flowers or the lutes is suffering from a sickness of the soul. What do you say, Ibn ʿArabī—isn’t beauty just the outward breath of the Truth?

✨ Ibn ʿArabī: Precisely, Abū Ḥāmid! To call beauty ḥarām (forbidden) is to misunderstand tajallī (Divine self-disclosure), because God is the Beautiful who loves beauty. Every melody is just a fragmented echo of the primordial “Am I not your Lord?”—so if you’re hearing the wood or the string instead of the Beloved, that is your only sin. What do you think, listener? Is your soul hearing the instrument or the Artist behind it?

From The Majlis on Sirah