I remember when chess was recounted as one of the great accomplishments of Islamic civilization. Chess has been the subject of debate for not a few Muslim scholars, and it has been re-emphasized again that at least for the moment, Chess is an evil deserving of a fatwa alongside other condemned things such as but not limited to Christians, Jews, alcohol, drugs, gambling, tomatoes, bananas, Mickey Mouse, visiting the planet Mars, Pokemon, cucumbers, carrots, soccer, silk, nylon, polio vaccines, heliocentrism, catch-and-release fishing, talking while urinating, romance novels, e-cigarettes, stringed instruments, the Pyramids, Salman Rushdie, and emoticons,
And on a side note, chess is not actually Islamic, but Indo-Iranian. The word chess comes from the Hindi chattaranga, meaning “four arms,” and was Arabized as shatranj (شطرنج).
From the UK Guardian:
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”.
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.
Given that chess is haram now, one might ask how does one defend oneself against it? Perhaps Mr. Ash-Shaykh could take a lesson from Monty Python’s famous sketch, Self-Defense Against Fruit:
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