Chess forbidden in Islam, rules Saudi mufti, but issue not black and white
Kareem Shaheen in Beirut
Thursday 21 January 2016 07.31 EST
Game likely to take on status of minor vices such as music after Sheikh Abdulaziz al-Sheikh says it encourages gambling
Saudi Arabia’s grand mufti has ruled that chess is forbidden in Islam, saying it encourages gambling and is a waste of time.
Sheikh Abdulaziz al-Sheikh was answering a question on a television show in which he issues fatwas in response to viewers’ queries on everyday religious matters.
He said chess was “included under gambling” and was “a waste of time and money and a cause for hatred and enmity between players”.
Al-Sheikh justified the ruling by referring to the verse in the Qur’an banning “intoxicants, gambling, idolatry and divination”. It is not clear when the fatwa was delivered.
Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq’s supreme Shia religious authority, has previously issued rulings forbidding chess.
After the 1979 Islamic revolution, playing chess was banned in public in Iran and declared haram, or forbidden, by senior clerics because it was associated with gambling. But in 1988, Iran’s then supreme leader, Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini, lifted the ban and said it was permissible as long as it was not a means of gambling. Iran now has an active confederation for playing chess and sends players to international games.
Moves to suppress chess are likely to have come as a surprise to the seventh-century Muslims who conquered Persia and adopted the game before exporting it to Europe.
Muslim scholars tend to place chess, a skill-based game, in a different category from games of chance, such as dice, but frown upon it if it distracts a person from performing the five daily prayers. Placing bets under any circumstances is forbidden.
Source: http://www.theguardian.com
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