How can we judge the practice and authorization of children to play numerous and widespread electronic games such as those produced by Sony and Nitendo and others?
The answer
Praise be to Allah.
Anyone who looks at these electronic games discovers that they are based on intellectual abilities (maharat) and individual behaviors.
They deal with different areas. Sometimes it is an imaginary war where people must be trained to handle similar situations and take precautions to escape dangers, fight enemies and destroy objectives.
Sometimes it involves planning or embarking on an adventure or escaping from a maze or fleeing from a beast or participating in a race of planes, automobiles or other machines. Finally, it may involve overcoming obstacles or searching for lost treasure.
Some games develop knowledge and possible concerns. This is the case for games consisting of dismantling, reassembling, reuniting the pieces of a torn photo, constructing, coloring, shading and lighting.
Religious status
Islam does not prohibit entertainment and the acquisition of lawful pleasures by legal means.
In principle, games are permitted as long as they do not distract their practitioners from a religious duty such as the celebration of prayer and charity to parents; and as long as they do not involve prohibited things. However, there are many prohibited things that appear there. Let us cite the following:
- the games which reproduce a war between the good inhabitants of the earth and the evil inhabitants of the sky and what these ideas convey in fact of accusations against Allah the Most High and the accusation of the noble angels.
- games which are based on the sanctification of the cross and attempt to make people believe that passing near it provides health and strength and brings back the spirit or strengthens the spirit of the player, etc. The same goes for games that teach how to make greeting cards about Christianity.
- games that approve of magic and glorify magicians.
- games that spread hatred against Islam and Muslims such as this game in which the player scores 100 points if he bombs Mecca and 50 if he bombs Baghdad.
- the glorification of unbelievers and the development of a feeling of pride towards them. This is the case of games in which the player who chooses an infidel army becomes strong and the one who chooses an Arab army becomes weak. The same is true of games which instill in the child admiration for disbelieving sports clubs and the names of disbelieving athletes.
- games which include naked images of the intimate parts of the human body, and games which offer the winner a photo of a naked person.
The same is true of games that corrupt morals, such as those based on the idea of saving oneself with one's beloved from the bad guys or the monster.
- games that rely on games of chance and maysir.
- music whose prohibition is well known in Islam.
- they harm the body, particularly the eyes and nerves, and are accompanied by sound effects that are harmful to the ears. In addition, recent studies have proven that these games are addictive, harm the nervous system, and create tension and nervousness in children.
- They instill in their practitioners violence, criminality, the trivialization of murder as is the case in the famous game Doom.
- They change reality for the child and immerse him in the imaginary world of impossible things such as the return to life here on earth after death and the possession of an extraordinary force which does not exist in reality and the representation extraterrestrial beings, etc.
Conclusion
We have multiplied the examples of the dangers that games involve in the field of beliefs and their disadvantages from a religious point of view because many fathers and mothers do not pay attention to them and bring their children to the game rooms to entertain them. It is worth paying attention to the fact that it is not permitted to organize a lottery around these games, even in cases where their practice is lawful. Indeed, they do not constitute instruments of jihad and do not provide useful force in jihad.
Further read : Gambling in Islam: The harms to be aware of
