Blindspot!
From Issue: 692 [Read full issue]
Entertainment Culture
For the young as well as for adults, entertainment is a necessity of life. The standpoint of some literalist scholars or rigorist trends are untenable and absurd. They seem to want to force on us a kind of daily life devoid of entertainment, without reading, without imagination, without music ... without even spiritual rest. This cannot be and does not correspond to Islam's teachings. We hear that music has become the universal language of young people, that the images on television and in films agitate the minds of people the world over, that great sports events have become the ritual gatherings of modern times ... and we should act as if this had no impact on the minds, hearts, and daily lives of believers wishing to live in harmony with certain principles and a life ethics?! The question is not to know whether we should entertain ourselves, but what the meaning, form, and nature of that entertainment should be.
What is at stake are the welfare, balance, and sound development of the children, teenagers, men, and women of our time, both North and South. Entertainment and play must represent "pauses" of a sort at the heart of more serious intellectual, social, and political preoccupations, but they should by no means promote values contrary to the higher goals and general ethics.
The point is not, as in "the carnivalization of life," to promote continuous play and an endless quest for entertainment that dominates everything else, which acts like a drug and transforms us into slaves addicted to our sensations and emotions. It should be the opposite: devising entertainment that makes human beings balanced, independent, and freer.
Muslim societies and communities are so afraid of the effect of alienating entertainment that they produce amusements and games that are either packed with religious references (and thereby no longer provide actual, necessary recreation) or childish (as if to enjoy recreation as a Muslim, one must refuse to become an adult or pretend never to have become one ...).
Women and men who possess the inclination and skill ought therefore to be invited to show more creativity, to integrate modern techniques of communication, to specialize in that Universe, and to show discriminating professionalism.
Compiled From:
"Radical Reform: Islamic Ethics and Liberation" - Tariq Ramadan, pp. 196, 197