Music in the Islamic Tradition

Music in the Islamic Tradition

By Abdal Hakim Murad
Cambridge Muslim College

Opening

Peace be upon you, and the mercy of Allah and His blessings.

In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.

All praise is due to Allah, Lord of the worlds, and blessings and peace upon the Messenger of Allah, his family, his companions, and those who are loyal to him.

Introduction

It's a rather subtle, difficult, often unsatisfying kind of subject, not least because it's one of those issues where Muslims get agitated and jumpy very quickly. It would be interesting to actually make a list of those subjects where somebody only has to press a button and everybody starts jumping up and down, saying halal or haram or whatever. Hijab issues, gender interaction issues are a famous one, and this seems to be another, for whatever reason, even though it's kind of historically and Quranically on the sort of outer edge, really, of what is actually explicitly treated, and also surrounded by a good deal of classical discussions that were not resolved in the classical period and are unlikely to be resolved by our lesser selves.

But if we're looking more generally at the question of sound, there are certain things that we can say where we can perhaps make some progress without getting into the minutiae of the fiqh.

Sound and Revelation

Sound is the sense whereby revelation first reaches us. The Quran is a book, a kitab, but the iqra was about that one of the five senses that is to do with the ears, it's oral, and the production of a sound which is only perceived by people who can hear. That is the modality of communication, human subjects engaging with each other in creation, which has been chosen preferentially to be the level on which the elemental principle of the divine speech operates.

Revelation as a heard text. That means that we are dealing with a human faculty which is to do with hearing depth and engaging even with the infinite, because when we hear the divine speech we are hearing something that is freighted with all of these theological paradoxes about the uncreated antiquity of the word.

"Verses from the merciful which are renewed but whose ancientness is the quality of he who is ancient."

So when we hear the sound and the letters and the cadences and the syncopations of the book, what we are hearing is something that predates hearing itself. So already there is something about this that is mysterious, paradoxical, hard to figure out, but whose impact is profound, and music, using the word in the largest sense, anything beautiful that we like to hear, partakes of that.

The Science of Sound

Scientists argue about it, psychologists argue about it, it's not just the fuqaha. Everybody is not sure what is going on here. Why is it that when human beings, not really very much animals or anything else as far as we can tell, but human beings listen to certain types of sounds, certain measurable neurological and physiological and behavioural consequences tend to occur. When we listen to other kinds of sounds, we get other sorts of responses that are often the opposite.

What is it about sounds that can have this profound effect on us, that affects us more immediately than, say, seeing certain things or touching certain things. Sound is something that, the ear is a deep part of us. What is happening here, and the neuroscientists have tried hard to figure this out.

The octave, for instance, is a kind of mystery, and they think they may have understood it, but perhaps they don't. Why is it that when you have a middle C and then you go up to the C above it, every culture in the world recognises that those two notes are different but the same. So if you go up to the D, people are less happy. It's not an octave, something else is happening. Why is that? What's the nature of the octave? Why should the human brain, the human ear be attuned to that as such a fundamental basic thing in Chinese music, Indian music, Islamic music, Western music. It's something that's in us, it's not just a product of culture.

Ancient Understanding of Music

The ancient Greeks were very interested in music. They had musical instruments, they had voices. Greek drama, which was their principal cultural production, was essentially like an operatic performance with lots of choruses and it was musical. And we have an awareness of some of the modes that they used, the Dorian mode, Mixolodian mode, some of which have their cognates moving on into the modes of Islamic music.

Pythagoras thought that within us there is the capacity to resonate with things that are intrinsic in the universe, that are part of the mathematics and the geometry of the universe. So the idea that the celestial spheres actually make a particular sound or hit a particular note as they glide along, the music of the spheres, something that came into medieval Christian theology as well very often.

This goes into the Islamic discussions with Al-Farabi and his great book of music and is developed. So it's something human beings have always been interested in and we still can't quite explain it.

Modern Music Therapy

Music therapy is now a big thing that you can get on the NHS and all the major hospitals will offer things for a wide range of complaints. If you look at any big medical website and you look up music therapy, you'll see that almost everything is covered by forms of music therapy which are known to have positive clinical outcomes. Otherwise the NHS wouldn't pay for it if it was useless.

Certain forms of schizophrenia are routinely treated with music therapy now. Sometimes forms of chronic depression are treated with music. Certain types of music release endorphins in the brain, reduce anxieties, give people a sense of serenity. Obsessive-compulsive disorder sometimes can be usefully treated with music therapy. Certain allergies even. Also, heart disease. It's been shown that the pulse is regularised by music. And that also the blood pressure is lowered amongst people who are listening to music.

Islamic Medical Tradition

Islamic civilisation has already known that for a very long time. If you've ever been to, for instance, the town of Edirne in Turkey, which was the big Hadith city of the Ottoman Empire, near the Dar al-Hadith, there's also the hospital for treating mental patients with music therapy. The patient would be brought out by the physician and the symptoms would be read out. And the musicians would play something that was believed to be beneficial. And there's a famous one in Damascus and it's part of classical Islamic civilisation.

And that still is alive. You can go to Istanbul and you can buy CDs of music that is used in the treatment of mental disorders. It's still a living tradition.

The Power of Singing

In terms of singing, singing of all of the forms of quote-unquote music or recitation is thought to have particular benefits. So, for instance, forms of asthma are often dealt with by training people's voices to sing. Because it affects the larynx, it affects the vocal cords, it opens up certain things that may have been twisted or disoriented.

Singing, some anthropologists, paleontologists will say actually singing is before speech for human beings. Very, very ancient, secular view of course, but it's the speculation that they offer, it's something elemental. Human beings have always sung. There is no culture ever known amongst human beings where there haven't been traditions of getting together around the campfire and singing together, reciting the heroism of our ancestors, talking about God or the gods and collectively celebrating.

Historical Musical Practice

Nowadays, because of electricity and CDs and iPods and iPlayers and the rest of it, we tend to be passive in our consumption of music. Historically, that was not the case. Historically, people generally were generators of their own music. And this helped to bond families, to bond neighborhoods, to bond church communities, to bond all different religious communities through the human sharing that comes about by jointly making a sound.

In Elizabethan England, it was what you did when you went to visit somebody. You would bring along sheet music and it was specially printed so one sheet of paper for poor people, as it was expensive, could be put on a table. And people could read it wherever they were around the table with different parts and they were really good because they didn't have TVs, they didn't have iTunes passwords, it was just their own music.

Quranic Recitation and Beautiful Sound

The Holy Prophet, peace be upon him, said to one of his companions, who had a beautiful voice reciting the Quran:

(Sahih al-Bukhari)

"You have been given one of the pipes of David"

Because according to the biblical text, David played pipes and danced in front of the Ark of the Covenant. But we have this idea of beauty in Qur'anic recitation being important.

(Sunan Abu Dawud)

"Make the Quran more beautiful through your voices."

And this is something that everybody's experienced. If you're in the mosque doing taraweeh, and the imam with a lot of khushu' who knows the maqams and knows the makharij and is sounding beautiful, it's an amazing experience, the most beautiful thing on the planet. But he's kind of got a smoker's cough, and he's kind of always knocked a semitone off the right note at the end of each verse. It's completely a different experience.

And clearly, the dawah requires that we present the beauty of the text with beauty. So, none of that is particularly controversial. But in Islamic civilization, then, the awareness that music is an axiom, and the Qur'an is itself musical, is not something that anybody's contested.

Islamic Musical Modes (Maqams)

Now Islamic music, I mentioned that Greek music has the modes, a few basic modes. But one of the features of Islamic music, including Tajweed, is the gigantic multiplication of the modes. Which become the principal form of aesthetic expression in the oral dimension of Islamic civilization. And everybody had to know the modes.

The maqams become a whole universe of quite rarefied and often quite difficult, inaccessible elite music sometimes. Most of the maqams are not used for something like Tajweed, for instance. Tajweed might use about 15 maqams maximum.

If you go, for instance, to the Fatih Mosque in Istanbul for your tarawih, after the isha, the salawat, and so forth, then the first two rakas will be in a particular maqam, and again, they usually start with maqam sabah. And then after two rakas, there'll be a tasbih or a temjid, and then another two rakas, and then there'll be an ilahi in a different maqam.

Historically the Muslims have said yes - that each maqam produces particular kinds of mood. So Farabi, who wrote the first big book of music in our civilization, early Arabic philosopher, famous lutenist as well, the story goes that with his lute he could make an audience laugh, or he could make an audience cry, just going through the maqams.

The Fiqh Controversy

The question of instrumental music - it is the consensus of the four Sunni schools that instrumental music, which they argue over the exact definition of it, is haram. That's the normal view. But if you start to go looking, if you're interested in minority views, safest thing in Islam is always to take what seems to be the consensual view.

But there are minority opinions. The zahiris, for instance, who are more literalist than the hanbalis, generally allow most instrumental music. So Ibn Hazm al-Zahiri, the most literalist of all, says everything that isn't explicitly forbidden in the Qur'an and the hadith is all right, and you don't have the right to do qiyas or to extrapolate in any way.

Some of the malikis also, interestingly, particularly some of the rather austere original Medina malikis will report views from Imam Malik that he allowed certain types of stringed instruments, certain types of flute. Mawaridi also reports of some of the disciples of Imam Shafi'i that Imam Shafi'i would allow certain types of instrumental music.

The Human Voice as the Perfect Instrument

What is unmistakably and unambiguously and unanimously halal is the use of the human voice. And the human voice is actually the most profound and subtle and beautiful of instruments. It's part of the gift that Allah has given us that despite the complexity of the guitar and the lute and the piano and the organ, it doesn't compete with the beauty of a great singer.

This is part of the takrim, the honouring that's been given to Benny Adam. Which means that to some extent you can have the fullness of a musical experience without having to get into those fiqh controversies and things with harmonies and the fullness of the maqam system and also the sense that the human voice is coming from the human depths unlike the sound of a pipe or a violin or the organ at the chapel next door which is something mechanical.

There's something more human about it and hence more humanly interesting. The world is full of minds ready to be stepped on and the human voice is alhamdulillah the best of all instruments and we do know now the scientists have told us that collective singing releases those endorphins and gets us going and helps us to bond and is a primordial and ancient human practice and a sacred practice.

Conclusion

So that is, I think, where we are at the moment in the ummah even though we're at a very sort of jumpy and paranoid time where people are really hyperventilating about things. That opinion exists in the ummah but best to stay with the uncontroversial because the world is full of minds ready to be stepped on and the human voice is alhamdulillah the best of all instruments.