Muslim Love Story (Under Major Editing)

Chapter 22 - DEPRESSION

Edited. ✅

x HIRA x

"Assalamu alaykum warahmatullah. Wa Assalamu alaykum warahmatullah." Soon thereafter, they finished praying and went on to doing their post salah adhkar before getting up and deciding to walk around the hill tracks until Isha time.

"Do you listen to music?" Amir asked me. I shook my head no.

"Music is haram." I said.

Allaah says in Soorat Luqmaan (interpretation of the meaning):

"And of mankind is he who purchases idle talks (i.e. music, singing) to mislead (men) from the path of Allaah..." [Luqmaan 31:6]

The scholar of the ummah, Ibn 'Abbaas (may Allaah be pleased with him) said: this means singing. Mujaahid (may Allaah have mercy on him) said: this means playing the drum (tabl). (Tafseer al-Tabari, 21/40).

Al-Hasan al-Basri (may Allaah have mercy on him) said: this aayah was revealed concerning singing and musical instruments (lit. woodwind instruments). (Tafseer Ibn Katheer, 3/451).

The only exception to the above is the daff – without any rings (i.e., a hand-drum which looks like a tambourine, but without any rattles) – when used by women on Eids and at weddings.

"Wait, do you listen to music?" I said, realising that he had briefly stiffened beside me.

"Yeah." He said. "I mean, not like all the time, but in the car on the radio and whatnot."

I hummed in response. "What type of music?"

Even though I was praying it wasn't rap, he replied with that exact genre.

"Really?" I asked him with a grimace.

"Rap nowadays is really bad. All it does is talk about drugs, sex, alcohol and everything else that's haram. Why would you listen to it?" I asked him.

He shrugged. "Through friends I guess. We just all listened to the same music."

"In Egypt?" I asked him.

He shook his head no. "Before we went."

"I was like 15." He said.

I raised my eyebrows. "Wait, I thought you were in Egypt for five years."

"I was." He said and then I realised that my whole life had been a lie...okay, maybe that was a slight exaggeration. Even so, Amir's age was a big shock. This whole time I had thought that he was the same age as me, when really, he was two years older. "I thought you were eighteen." I mumbled.

"I'm twenty." He said with a smile.

"So why did you stay so behind for school?" I asked.

He then went into the whole story about his family moving overseas and explained how his English was not as well after five years of talking only Arabic and so his parents, after the opinions and advice of his teachers, put him into school from two years back so he could catch up.

We left the hill soon after and got into the car, deciding we'd pray Isha at a mosque on the way home rather than by ourselves.

In the car I called my mum. "Hey, sweetheart." She answered.

"Hey, mum. What are you doing?" I asked.

"Nothing, we're just sitting down watching TV." She said.

I assumed they were watching yet another Turkish soap opera with either Arabic subtitles or dubbing. I didn't like the damn things. I felt they were very repetitive and all drama. However, my mum, and basically everyone in our whole masjid were addicted to them.