If music be the food of love, issue a fatwa
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei says music is permitted but bad and nasty.
Khamenei said: “Although music is halal, promoting and teaching it is not compatible with the highest values of the sacred regime of the Islamic Republic.”…”It’s better that our dear youth spend their valuable time in learning science and essential and useful skills and fill their time with sport and healthy recreations instead of music.
Because…music, while permitted, is not a healthy recreation. It’s a recreation, but not a healthy one. It’s permitted, but it’s ungood. Why? Well because it’s pretty, and pleasurable, and emotive, and often sexy, and often exciting. We can’t be having any of that. It’s not healthful. Or useful. Or good. Or compatible with the highest values of the sacred regime of the Islamic Republic. Which are established by a guy with a black cushion on his head, who looks as if he doesn’t rock out much.
Khamenei’s views are interpreted as administrative orders for the whole country, which must be obeyed by the government. Last month Khamenei issued a controversial fatwa in which he likened his leadership to that of the Prophet Muhammad and obliged all Iranians to obey his orders.
Controversial – really? I can’t imagine why. Guy says he’s like Mo and all Iranians have to do what he says. What’s the problem? It simplifies life. So does not having music. Simplicity is good, because it keeps people out of badness. Complicated things are bad.
“Simplicity is good, because it keeps people out of badness. Complicated things are bad.”
So, folk music is halal but bebop is haram? Charlie Daniels is fine but Charlie Parker is a no-no? Small ensembles are great but big bands are undesirable?
Funny that a theocrat should come out against music. Music is pretty much the only thing that gives my life meaning and religion is pretty much the only thing that gives me headaches.
If you want to be “compatible with the highest values of the sacred regime of the Islamic Republic”, you’d better study nuclear physics. Reducing infidels to radioactive debris is halal.
Yeah, the idea behind getting rid of music is only a ruse to eliminate the threat of trite and violence. All Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is trying to do is return Iran to the ultra-conservative atmosphere of the 1979 revolution. There is also a ruling in place since 2005 regarding supervision of content from films, TV series and their voice-overs is emphasised in order to support spiritual cinema. I once watched an Iranian programme concerning young people, who had gone underground with their modern music. All the regime wants to do is stifle the natural talent of people. Think revolutionary China in the past and also Russia where innumerable people were tortured or had to flee their respective countries for the sake of the expression of art. Music comes naturally. It is alright for conservative Muslims to sing the praises of Allah, but not so the praises of art. It quite simply reminds me of children in Goldenbridge who were forced every day to put index finger on their lips for fear of creating human sounds. Under no circumstances must any kind of chimes spring forth out of their little mouths. Maybe Iranians will have to apologise for breathing next! If they’re not stoning them they’re stifling them to death with the unnatural disallowance of music. Music is very soothing and very therapeutic. I have personally depended on it throughout my young life, when there was no human person to depend on and I found it to be a powerful asset and saving grace.
I can’t listen to music too often. It affects your nerves, makes you want to say stupid nice things, and stroke the heads of people who could create such beauty while living in this vile hell. And now you must not stroke anyone’s head: you might get your hand bitten off. You have to strike them on the head, without any mercy, although our ideal is not to use force against anyone. –Lenin
Are they related?
So many things in islam are banned as haram you have to ask, are any muslims really happy?
” Controversial – really? I can’t imagine why.”
Anthropomorphism.
Authoritarians of all kinds commonly ban music and singing. Hence the rebellious expression ‘dance to the beat of a different drum.’ Singing of songs that support the regime is generally OK, but sadly Islam bans both the graphic representation of the human form, which has led to non-representational art of a high order as seen in the filigreed murals and patterns of Persian carpets, but little else.
In the USSR, artists divided into apologists for the regime or rebels. The latter group had a hard time. Sholokhov was wined and dined by the Party bosses. Boris Pasternak on the other hand won the Nobel Prize for literature and the intense displeasure of the regime. “I have not read Pasternak, but I condemn him” was a popular sarcastic jibe at it.
Likewise the fascist Pinochet regime of Chile made a special point of smashing the hands of the guitarist and folksinger Victor Jara before killing him.
Nice people.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%ADctor_Jara
Just a question here – why does religion always seem so opposed to joy?
Jonny spielt auf.
Ayotollah Strikes Up, more like it, indeed.
It was also true of other composers of Ernst Krenek’s generation, such as Korngold, Schreker and Oskar Straus. Squashing the very soul and life out of them in another way.
In general news, one of our reporters just got arrested:
http://www.timeslive.co.za/local/article585596.ece/Sunday-Times-statement-on-arrested-reporter
And this is happening at the same time as the ANC is launching a war on the free news media:
http://www.timeslive.co.za/local/article585455.ece/SANEF-to-fight-ANC-move-to-muzzle-media
While islamist clerical-fascists cannot help but tighten the screws until the entire society becomes an inactive human and intellectual desert where no one does much of anything except sleeping, eating and praying. By restricting human activity and persuits, by preventing and eschewing any and all innovation, and by banning any activites ( music being one) that could stimulate imagination and creativity and lead, thus, to the potential for subversion, a much tighter controle can be maintained over the populace.
Given how much music has been and is still being created in Muslim countries the Ayatollah must think a very large percentage of the Muslim world is haram, the Sufis are particularly fond of it and we all know what the fundies think about them. I bet he just loves the East west Divan Orchestra.
One can only hope that the more suppressive these regimes become, the more likely they are to foster their own destruction, as more people become dissatisfied. Artists, writers and musicians tend to be very hard to suppress. Natural revolutionaries, as ’twere.
Well, at least one Muslim country is venturing into popular TV productions…reality TV at that!
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/29/world/asia/29imam.html?_r=2
Ian MacDougall @ 7
Spot on. The similarity between this islamic loonies’ pronouncements, and that of some christians in the past is scary.
Herewith a glimpse into Calvin’s Geneva:
The Diabolic Vice of Cheerfulness
As he walked along the street, this minion of the Calvinist dictatorship would keep his ears pricked to ascertain whether anyone was singing a secular song, or was making music, or was addicted to the diabolic vice of cheerfulness. For henceforward in Geneva the authorities were always on the hunt for anything that smacked of pleasure, for any “paillardise“; and woe unto a burgher caught visiting a tavern when the day’s work was over to refresh himself with a glass of wine, or unto another who was so depraved as to find pleasure in dice or cards.