Using Background Music in Advertisements for a Halal Clothing Brand

Answered by Shaykh Irshaad Sedick

Question

I sell halal clothing and advertise it on TikTok. My videos usually have clean background music. Am I allowed to do this? Does it make a difference that the music is there to sell rather than to entertain? Can I follow the scholars who allow it? Would vocals with no instruments work instead? And what should I do about the money I have already earned?

Answer

In the name of Allah, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate. All praise is for Allah, and blessings and peace upon His Messenger.

May Allah Most High reward you for stopping to ask, and put blessing (baraka) in your trade. Most people find a problem like this and keep going until someone stops them. You went looking for the ruling while the sales were good, and that instinct will serve your business longer than any advert.

Our school, in its relied-upon (muʿtamad) position, holds stringed and wind instruments unlawful, whether you play them or choose to listen to them, and I am afraid clean lyrics and a commercial purpose do not change that. You can use the human voice on its own, and you will find it gives you more than you expect. As for the money, it is lawful and yours.

The Ruling Follows the Instrument

Imam Nawawi (Allah have mercy on him) settles the question in a few lines of the Minhaj. Caravan chanting is permitted, and so is listening to it. Singing (ghina) without an instrument is disliked, as is listening to it. An instrument that is an emblem of the drinkers, such as the tanbur, the lute, the cymbal, or the Iraqi flute, is unlawful, and so is listening to it. The Minhaj excepts the reed flute (yara) as the asahh, but Imam Nawawi holds it unlawful in the Rawda, and that is the position Imam Ibn Hajar and Imam Ramli rely upon. The hand drum (duff) is permitted at weddings, circumcisions, and elsewhere. [Nawawi, Minhaj al-Talibin, Kitab al-Shahadat]

Why these instruments? Imam Ibn Hajar al-Haytami (Allah have mercy on him) says the pleasure they produce invites corruption the way wine does, and that they are the emblem of the dissolute, whom we are forbidden to imitate. Imam Ramli (Allah have mercy on him) gives the same reasoning. [Ibn Hajar al-Haytami, Tuhfat al-Muhtaj; Ramli, Nihayat al-Muhtaj]

So the ruling sits on the instrument. Keeping your lyrics clean spares you a second problem; it does not remove the first.

One point runs in your favor, so let me state it exactly. What the jurists forbid is listening by choice. Sound that merely reaches a person carries no sin, as Imam Ramli says in so many words. [Ramli, Nihayat al-Muhtaj; Ibn Hajar al-Haytami, Tuhfat al-Muhtaj] A Muslim walking through a shopping center answers for nothing the speakers play. You, though, choose the track, lay it under the footage, and send it out for others to hear.

Advertising Is Not One of the Exceptions

You might ask whether trade counts as a need. The school does grant exceptions, but look at what they are. The hand drum, which Imam Nawawi allows at weddings, circumcisions, and elsewhere, rings on its rim. A sick man, who may listen to an instrument once two upright physicians have testified that he will not recover without it, much as a patient may take medicine that is otherwise impure. [Ibn Hajar al-Haytami, Tuhfat al-Muhtaj; Ramli, Nihayat al-Muhtaj] Reach, and revenue are a benefit, and a benefit is a long way from that kind of necessity. Nobody in the school carved out an exception for trade.

One qualification does narrow what you have to strip out. Imam Khatib Shirbini transmits from Imam Zarkashi (Allah have mercy on them) that when singing is joined to a forbidden instrument, the analogy makes the instrument unlawful while the singing is merely disliked. [Shirbini, Mughni al-Muhtaj] So it is the track you have to lose, not necessarily the voice on it.

A Real Disagreement, With Conditions Attached

Imam Wahba al-Zuhayli (Allah have mercy on him) gives the prohibition of instruments that produce rapture as the well-known position of all four schools, and in fairness, he also gives the other side. Imam Malik, the Zahiris, and a group of the Sufis permitted listening even to the lute and the reed flute; Ruyani relates from Qaffal that Imam Malik permitted singing with instruments, and some Shafiʿis went that way too. [Zuhayli, al-Fiqh al-Islami wa Adillatuh] In our own day, Dar al-Ifta al-Misriyya permits music and singing, with conditions on content.

Whether you may take that position is really a question about taqlid, and here Imam Ibn Hajar al-Haytami is unusually precise. Following Imam Subki, he allows a man to adopt another school’s ruling if he believes it is the stronger one, or if he needs a dispensation (rukhsa) for a need that has actually arisen. He does not allow it to the man who wants the easier ruling and nothing else, because such a man, in his words, is following his appetite and calling it religion, nor does he allow the habit of picking the lightest view from each school in turn. [Ibn Hajar al-Haytami, al-Fatawa al-Hadithiyya]

Where do you fall? If a qualified scholar who knows your circumstances judges the need real and tells you to take the dispensation, that door is open, and Imam Ibn Hajar names it. What closes it is simply wanting the answer that keeps the sales up. Bear in mind, too, that the scholars who permit instruments have conditions of their own about content and company, and a good deal of what trends on these platforms would fail those before the question of instruments even arose.

A Voice Will Carry the Advert

The dislike attached to unaccompanied singing is aimed at singing pursued for idleness. Imam Adhrai (Allah have mercy on him) holds that what people sing alongside work, such as the bedouin driving their camels or a mother settling her child, is permitted without doubt and even recommended when it moves people toward good. [Ibn Hajar al-Haytami, Tuhfat al-Muhtaj; Ramli, Nihayat al-Muhtaj]

That leaves you a great deal: your own voice over the footage, a nashid with no instruments under it, the sound the shoot actually made, sound effects that imitate no instrument, and the hand drum on the school’s own text. Work with those for a season, and you may find you prefer them. A voice says something; a trending track only fills a gap.

Your Earnings Are Lawful

Rest your heart on this one. Your customer wanted a garment, paid for it, and received it. Whatever ruling applies to the advert falls outside that contract, and what happens outside a contract does not affect the price within it.

The school says as much in a far heavier case. Imam Shirazi (Allah have mercy on him) writes that selling grapes to a man who presses wine, or weapons to a man who will disobey Allah with them, is disliked, yet the sale is valid. Imam Nawawi then quotes Imam Shafiʿi (Allah have mercy on him) from the Mukhtasar: “I dislike selling grapes to one who presses wine, and a sword to one who will disobey Allah with it, and I do not annul this sale.” [Nawawi, al-Majmuʿ Sharh al-Muhadhdhab]

If that sale is valid and its price lawful, then a modest garment sold to someone who happened to see a video would be lawful too. You didn’t know, either, and a ruling that never reached a person is not held against him. Seek Allah’s forgiveness in general terms for what has passed, keep what you earned, and set the practice right from today, in sha Allah.

What Should You Do Now?

If I were advising a friend, I would say this. Choose one campaign, only one, and rebuild its sound this week: your own voice over the cut, the room tone and effects left in, and, where you want a bed, a vocal recorded without instruments, which several nashid artists now sell for exactly this use. Then give it a month and crunch your numbers before deciding what the change meant. More than one brand that made this switch found that the voice outperformed the track.

If the numbers come back badly and you are convinced your livelihood turns on instrumental audio, sit with a qualified scholar who can hear the details. A ruling taken from a teacher who knows your situation is a different thing from one you assembled yourself out of a disagreement you read about.

And Allah Most High knows best.

Shaykh Irshaad Sedick

Related Answers

• Can I Use Background Music for My Educational Videos? — The predominant view holds instrumental music unlawful, though a minority opinion permits it for wholesome content when genuinely needed.
• Hearing Music vs Listening to It — Music that merely reaches the ear by chance carries no sin; only a deliberate, chosen act of listening does.
• Can I Work for an Organization That Makes Ads with Music? — Working where music is unavoidable is permitted when no other livelihood is available, while one keeps seeking a cleaner alternative.
• What Is the Shafiʿi Ruling on Listening to Music and Singing? — All four schools hold instrumental music unlawful, with the hand drum and permissible singing kept as exceptions.