Ahmed Danyal Arif, UK
Before proceeding into a lengthy discussion of gambling, a story might do well to illustrate my point well.
As my nine-year-old daughter and I would walk back from school or go on walks, she’d ask me about the different shops we passed – bakeries and cafés, flower shops and corner stores — and the brightly-coloured, arcade-esque gambling shops like paddy power.
She was curious why people kept going inside the gambling shop, which I tried to explain in quick and simple words. One day I decided to take it a step further with a simple experiment: I laid out some sweets on the table in front of us.
I asked her: ‘Imagine you and I each put one sweet on the table. Then we roll a dice. If the dice shows an even number, you get both sweets, if it shows an odd number, I get both sweets. Do you want to play?’
She looked at the two sweets for a moment, then looked at me and said: ‘Hmm I don’t know Papa, someone will always be sad.’
‘Oh, why is that?’ I asked.
She said, ‘Because one of us will lose a sweet even though we didn’t do anything, and that just feels greedy. You could have just shared it in the first place.’ I smiled and said: ‘You are right – and to think, some people do the same thing with real money.’ Her answers were so simple, yet they captured three important lessons regarding gambling.
#1: Gambling is Zero-Sum
Gambling creates gain for one only by creating loss for another, known as a zero-sum game. It is not an exchange of effort, service, or creation of value, but a mere transfer of wealth by chance. Nothing new is produced, only disappointment for one side.
In fact, the Arabic term used by the Holy Qur’an for gambling is Maisir, derived from Yusrun meaning ‘ease’ or ‘convenience’. The word-choice explains the reality of gambling, that the gains of gambling are obtained effortlessly – without labour, skill, or productive work. If a person came up to you on the high street promising easy money, you’d certainly call them a scammer. In gambling, you’re simply scamming yourself.
Such ‘easy money’ stands in complete opposition to the Islamic economic vision, which is founded upon fairness, effort, and just exchange. Islam’s prohibition of gambling thus seeks to protect a person from the false promises of gambling, so that they do not revel in mere fiction and daydreaming, but resolve to make their dreams a reality through their own effort.
#2: Gambling Belies Fairness
The ‘game’ hides an unfair asymmetry. My daughter immediately realised that happiness for one comes at the direct cost of sadness for the other. Such transactions cannot be called just (‘adl), because fairness in economic life means reciprocity – giving and receiving in a way that both sides benefit. Ask yourself: if you would gamble your money – whether it’s the lottery, scratchers, or sports gambling – and the gambling companies profit billions upon billions of dollars every year off of you: who is the winner and who is the loser? Remember, gambling is zero-sum: only one can win, and it’s not you.
#3: What Does Your Gut Tell You?
My daughter’s instinct told her that gambling is unnatural. She did not need books on economics or theology to understand it. A child’s heart, which runs on happiness (if you let it) knows that joy built on another’s loss is not true joy. How can we, the current (and future) mothers and fathers, build a society in which we teach our children that you can win at the cost of others, and call it ‘harmless’ or ‘ a game’? Remember: the second you win a sports bet online because Mohamed Salah scored, that money is taken from the pockets of someone who bet against you; someone with a debilitating gambling addiction, who doesn’t know how they’ll pay next month’s rent.
What is not balanced cannot be natural. Or as my daughter put it: ‘Real happiness is when everybody is happy and the two people have got one thing each.’
Try this experiment with any child and you may be surprised: their pure nature is often more in tune with Islam’s teachings on gambling than the sophisticated justifications of adults today.
About the Author: Ahmed Danyal Arif is a French economist by education and currently working in London. He has a Masters degree in Economics and Politics. After working for the French tax administration system, he published two books in French: Islam & Capitalism: For an Economic Justice (2016), and Economic History of the Islamic World: From Pre-Islamic Arabia to the Umayyad Dynasty (2019). He currently serves as the Editor for the Economics Section in The Review of Religions.
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