I do not know how I got the PDF for this book, but I found it in my books folder and proceeded to skim through it before deletion, but some parts got me interested and I read it... It is absolute trash.
This book is a clumsy, paranoid rant masquerading as moral scholarship. It weaponises religion to wage war on music, creativity and emotional expression, relying entirely on cherry-picked hadith, pseudo-science and tired colonial resentment to support its thesis. Its arguments are shallow at best, manipulative at worst, riddled with logical fallacies that would make a first-year philosophy student wince.
Almost every chapter is built on a slippery slope fantasy where a single note from a guitar strings the listener along a path of fornication, drug abuse and suicide. This is fear-mongering, not theology. It quotes studies with no nuance or proper citations, equating dopamine release from music to the effects of narcotics, as if pleasure and addiction are interchangeable. One might as well ban laughter, because it too alters brain chemistry.
The author evidently has no grasp of cultural context, history or even musical diversity, and proceeds to demonise all forms of sound with rhythm. The wild claim that headphones fulfil a prophecy about "music on our heads" is not only laughable but deeply unhinged. It is the sort of thing you would expect from a conspiracy theorist with a tin foil hat, not someone claiming intellectual authority.
Even the few attempts at subtlety collapse under contradiction. Concessions for music during Eid are brushed aside as special-case anomalies, while female singers are presented as symbols of society’s decline, objectified and blamed for the sins of others. The whole book reeks of control obsession and fear of human joy.
If your goal is to feel guilty for enjoying anything with melody, this book delivers. If you are looking for actual insight, theological depth or critical thought, look elsewhere. Preferably somewhere that respects the reader's intelligence.
1 star, only because Goodreads will not let me give zero.