© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2012 DOI: 10.1163/156851912X639932 Islamic Law and Society 19 (2012) 397-415 www.brill.com/ils Islamic Law and Society Leisure and Entertainment (malāhī) in Contemporary Islamic Legal ought: Music and the Audio-Visual Media Muhammad Al-Atawneh Abstract e status of leisure and entertainment (hereafter: malāhī) is an age-old issue that emerged during the very early stages of Islam and is still being debated today. Gen- erations of Muslim scholars and jurists have attempted to identify and delineate the permissible and the forbidden in this regard to accommodate the socio-cultural contexts of their respective societies. is article examines contemporary Islamic discourse on entertainment, particularly music and audio-visual media, e.g., television, Internet, cinema and theater. How do contemporary Muslim scholars define and relate to malāhī? What is the nature and characteristics of legitimate entertainment and leisure- time activities from the Islamic religio-legal perspective? I suggest that modern-day Muslim scholars, like their predecessors, never came to an agreement on the nature and scope of malāhī. ese scholars merely acknowledge that different ethico-legal boundaries are applied to malāhī in contemporary Muslim societies. Keywords Islam, leisure, music, entertainment, audio-visual media After a hiatus of almost three decades (1977-2006), resulting from his conversion to Islam, Yūsuf Islām, previously Cat Stevens, is back. Islām explained that when he realized that his career as a rock star was incom- patible with his new religious beliefs, his break from music was inevi- table: “… I heard another kind of voice saying that this [singing] is a dangerous business. You should be away from it, all the associations Correspondence: Muhammad al-Atawneh, Department of Middle East Studies, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, P.O. Box 15110, Beer Sheva, 84120, Israel. Email: HYPERLINK “mailto:alatawnh@bgu.ac.il” alatawnh@bgu.ac.il