Bitcoin Forum

Chess forbidden in Islam, rules Saudi mufti, but issue not black and white
Game likely to take on status of minor vices such as music after Sheikh Abdulaziz al-Sheikh says it encourages gambling


Kareem Shaheen in Beirut
Thursday 21 January 2016 12.31 GMT Last modified on Friday 22 January 2016 14.20 GMT

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/14947bd1ffcd11b2643b6a8d70bcc1f5b3806435/0_242_6000_3599/master/6000.jpg?w=1225&q=85&auto=format&sharp=10&s=55a87b81d423825f9bebfe67d1b4882b

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”.

 Chess is gloriously rebellious. Maybe that’s what Saudi Arabia’s mufti fears

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 Ruhollah 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.

Nigel Short, the British chess grandmaster, told the BBC that forbidding chess in Saudi Arabia would be a “great tragedy”. “I don’t consider chess to be a threat to society. It is not something that is so depraved as to corrupt morals,” he said. “Even Ayatollah Khomeini came to the conclusion that he’d gone too far and repealed his own ban.”

The region’s clerical establishment figures are no strangers to seemingly strange fatwas, or edicts. In the early 2000s, Saudi and other clerics issued a fatwa against the popular Pokémon franchise, and during football’s 2010 World Cup in South Africa, religious scholars in the United Arab Emirates said that using the widely reviled vuvuzela instrument was forbidden if the sound produced was above 100 decibels.

It is unlikely that Sheikh’s ruling will be enforced, and more plausible that chess will be relegated to the status of other minor vices, such as music, which many in the clerical establishment frown upon. Moreover, since the ruling was in response to a specific question, it was probably meant as an advisory opinion rather than a formal edict.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/21/chess-forbidden-in-islam-rules-saudi-arabia-grand-mufti#img-1

I guess the mufti realized that if people playing chess, they will inevitably start thinking. A wahhabi who is thinking...?!? That would be the end of the world as they know it :).

I think that it might also be simply because that's something close to distraction. And they don't want anyone to be distracted from God :/

But yeah result is the same. Chess is not important by itself. But I bet they ban everything developping your mind... That's what happens with religions...

"God does not play dice", said Einstein. Allah does not play chess, according to a saudi mufti...

 :D ;D :D

Ahahahah xD

You, sir, actually made me lauch  ;D ;D ;D ;D

The Saudis are patzers, their top player is ELO 2195 and number 25 on the list ELO 1008 (slightly better than your next chimpanzee). But the small Gulf kingdoms have quite good players and Iran and Egypt are decent chess powers. Turkey has lots of good players.

And obviously most of the former Soviet Muslim regions are formidable in chess as you´d expect. Their players are the usual Soviet School.

I'm surprised with this. I know it's impossible in a Muslim country to go in a cafe and play poker, but I've seen people playing checkers. It's only gambling, playing with money, which is forbidden. Chess, or checkers, have never been associated with money. Why is that mufti saying it is?

It seems to be an old fatwa which has been reiterated.
As long as it is not enforced, people shouldn't have any problems.

Playing chess can improve your intelligence, and that makes it hard for someone to brainwash you. This was probably the reason why the Wahhabi cleric banned chess. Any idea about the next targets? Here are some of them:

1. Muslims banned from taking bath
2. Muslims banned from using condoms
3. Muslims banned from drinking pineapple juice
4. Muslims banned from reading and writing, using any language
5. Muslims banned from wearing clothes which are not plain-white.

It's good to see they are making sure there is no hatred in Islam. :)

Those medieval fruitcakes are the dearest of darlings of those who for some mysterious reasons get voted into power here and there. But of course like seeks like. Horse manure goes well with cow dung.

 ;D thats a good point , to play good chess you need brains ,i doubt they have any idea about chess and so is the reason they could find a way to curb the freedom of people one way or the other. how can someone live their with these kind of rules. no booze nothing.. but the rich saudis go elsewhere to enjoy only the normal citizen have to bear this tough laws ..

No heterosexual sex?
That should solve a lot of problems in this world.  ;D

It's really funny to read such stupid things :)
Some other Muslim people was killed because of books they wrote or read, because they didn't have a beard, or listened wrong music (Afghanistan for example) etc.
Many people in the West already have a belief that Islam is backward and radical religion, and stories like this will not help to change views on Islam.
I think it's time that Islam change, and become more tolerant and open to others.
I hope it's not too late to see such positive changes in Islam

This is so stupid. It goes to show you just how backwards Saudi Arabia is. They would be nothing without oil money.

saudi arabia authorties are totally out of their minds.. they want to manipulate its society and turn them into living deaths..

BTW if you take a look at the Youtube vids shot by the Houthi rebels in Yemen, you can see the results :). Saudi soldiers sitting in their tanks on a rocky plain (with a bunch of big boulders everywhere around) a hill behind them. Houthis snaking between the boulders and playing a turkey shoot with RPG-7s. No saudis had the brain to send a mg team to the hilltop behind themselves or at least make some sort of infantry screen around the tanks. Perhaps if the officers could play chess... :)

They are "trained" and "advised" by people whose grasp of military procedure is very limited as has been very very very well demonstrated in one failed war adventure after the other. So, no surprises there.

The guy cannot win so he bans the game. Quran does not mention chess anywhere as far as I know  ::)

Seven things Saudi Arabia should definitely ban instead of banning chess

1. Lashing pensioners

Sentencing 74-year-old pensioner Karl Andree to 360 lashes for possessing alcohol is probably a tiny bit more immoral than chess, but that might just be us.

2. Beheading

Top tip: if you're trying to reduce "enmity and hatred between people", not beheading people as a form of justice is a good place to start.

3. Child jockeys

Although the annual King's camel race sounds fun, the fact that children are frequently injured taking part really isn't.

4. Human rights violations

Saudi Arabia is one of very few countries in the world that don't accept the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Considering it was established in 1948, it's probably about time to take a look.

5. Discriminating against women

The list of injustices Saudi women face is colossal, ranging from not being allowed to drive, to extreme difficulty obtaining divorce.

Although domestic violence against women was criminalised in 2013, the Grand Mufti has a lot left to work on before he should be allowed to tackle the tricky issue of chess.

6. Inequality

Despite having one of the world's most powerful economies, a quarter of Saudis live in poverty. Hey, King Salman, fancy sharing some of that multi-billion dollar personal fortune?

7. Monopoly

Way, way more immoral than chess.

http://i100.independent.co.uk/article/seven-things-saudi-arabia-should-definitely-ban-instead-of-banning-chess--b12TM6wA3l

The lesson here is that buying hundreds of billions of USD worth of advanced weaponry from the United States, Germany and Canada will be of no use, if you don't have intelligent and well-trained soldiers. The NATO nations are profiting enormously by selling their over-priced gadgets to the stupid Saudis. And in the meantime, the Houthis, armed with just AK-47s and RPGs are kicking the Saudis in the butt.

If you don't ban chess, then someone might find out those mullahs are dumber than a tic on a goat.

Actually americans are good on training, tactics and strategy. Crappy politics and the dependence on unreliable local resources make them losing wars. It appears, US decision makers have no idea or viable plans about what to do when the army defeated the enemy.

Now they need to invent a secret notation and play blindfold chess.

Well, I have my doubts about the officer cadre. And the doctrine. It´s good to think about minimizing your losses but not so good to make it an obsession. Then you may become convinced that the enemy has the same idea, which can be a costly mistake.

The best wars are ruthless, brutal and short. This saves lives in the long term. But it may not be so profitable for armaments manufacturers.