Al-Ghazali on Proper Conduct when Listening to Music and the Experience of Ecstasy is the eighteenth chapter of the Revival of the Religious Sciences (Ihya’ ʿulum al-din), a monumental work of classical Islam written by the renowned theologian-mystic Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (d. 505/1111). In Proper Conduct when Listening to Music and the Experience of Ecstasy, Ghazali focuses on an aspect of social life that was, and still is, considered controversial.
Ghazali’s approach to the subject is that human hearts are full of secrets. What is good or defective within them is activated by listening to music. It is this central and revealing role of the sense of hearing that makes it necessary to establish if, when and for whom listening to music is a legitimate activity.
Part I of Proper Conduct when Listening to Music and the Experience of Ecstasy consists of three chapters in which Ghazali discusses the arguments for and against the permissibility of listening to music. He dedicates a chapter to the opinions of the religious scholars and the Sufis on whether listening to music is lawful or unlawful, and a second chapter to those who expressly regard listening to music as unlawful and he responds to their arguments. In addition, Ghazali devotes an entire chapter to affirming that listening to music is in itself a permissible activity and he presents seven occasions when this is the case. In his arguments for the permissibility of listening to music, Ghazali constantly refers back to the practice of the Prophet Muhammad and gives examples from his life. The limitations or impediments to listening to music then lie not in music itself but in external factors and Ghazali outlines five main impediments. Part II focuses on the effects of listening to music on the listener and the inner and outer proper responses and conduct to these effects especially if they lead to ecstasy.
Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (450–505/1058–1111), theologian, logician, jurist and mystic, was born and died in Tus in Central Asia, but spent much of his life lecturing in Baghdad or leading the life of a wandering Sufi. His most celebrated work, Revival of the Religious Sciences, has exercised a profound influence on Muslim intellectual history by exploring the mystical significance of the practices and beliefs of Islamic orthodoxy, earning him the title of Hujjat al Islam, the ‘Proof of Islam’.
Anthony H. Johns, Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University in Canberra, held a chair in the Faculty of Asian Studies from 1963 to 1993, and is a specialist in Sufism in the Malay world, Islamic history and institutions, and the foundation texts of Islam. In the course of his distinguished career, Prof Johns has published significantly on the Qurʾan and on Qurʾanic exegesis.