Reasons behind prohibition of gambling and lottery : why is gambling prohibited ?

Fatawa Question

Dear Dr. Monzer, Assalamu Alaykum Wa Rahmatullah Wa Barakatuh, Dear prominent scholar As-Salam `Alaykum Wa Rahmatullah Wa Barakatuh my question is about the reasons behind the prohibition of gambling and lottery in Islam and in the case of these reasons not present. Allah Almighty says in the Qur'an : “O you who believe, truly intoxicants and gambling and divination by arrows are an abomination of Satan's doing ; avoid them in order that you may be successful. Assuredly Satan desires to sow enmity and hatred among you by means of intoxicants and gambling, and to hinder you from the remembrance of Allah and from prayer. Will you not then desist ? ”First of all, should we consider avoid at the same level as Haram ? Why ? From this verse we can understand the reasons from Allah asking us to ovoid gambling. The reason is the Satan wants us to lose our time on playing gambling games and then not think of Allah and the prayers and also to create enmity between players through the game. This is usually the case for card-like games (e.g. poker ?) where the game may stands for hours (during that time the players are of course not prying and not thinking of Allah) and the players are playing against each other so problems and thus enmity may arise between them. But my concern is about the lottery example where you don’t really lose time (it is once a week and it takes you really 2 minutes to play so we can’t consider that this may prevent you from thinking of Allah or the prayers) and you don’t play against others so no enmity my arise. Ok, enmity may arise if you win and they lose, but this is more Fassad ? Than other think and this can also be the case if you win through commerce. In this case the reasons behind the prohibition are absent. Can we in this case consider that the lottery is premised ? Also the amount of money you play is low, and if the person knows that he is not going to be addicted to this. Some other persons told me that the reason behind prohibition of lottery is that Muslims are not allowed to earn money without work, but in the other hand I did read some topics in the internet where Internet lottery games where you don’t pay to play are premised. In this case also the Muslim is earning money without really work for it. And in my opinion you can lose more time for these games than the one you are paying for. Since it is free and there are many of them in the internet and thus you play much more. Can you please give me your detailed point of view on this ? I thank you very much for the time you will devote to answer this question and pray Allah to guide all of us to his straight way. Jazakum Allahu Khairan for your constant help Yours, Sami

Fatwa

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Publication Date

2008-03-19

Main Subjects

Financial and Accounting Sciences
Religion
Islamic Studies

Topics

• Islamic jurisprudence
• Gambling
• Taboos
• Lotteries

No. of Pages

3

Data Type

Fatawa

Language

English

Record ID

BIM-733897

• APA
• MLA
• AMA