The Ruling of Football Watching According to Contemporary Islamic Scholars

Football is a well-known game to the world population nowadays. That also goes to the Muslim countries. There is almost no country that does not have its own football team. To the population of Muslim countries, football game itself raises many reactions among the people. Some want to watch football either at home or stadium and some do not want to watch it on the reason that it is a prohibited act in the religion and its ruling is haram. Debate on football game and its ruling has not been touched in focus by classical scholars, instead it is only touched in focus by contemporary scholars. The objective to put forward this article is to explain on the ruling of watching football match according to contemporary scholars to provide clarification for the for-football fans among Muslim population of the world in general and Malaysian Muslim in specific that whether it is allowed or not for the act. Writing method is based on qualitative study. Data were collected according to document analysis by referring to books on Quranic interpretation, Prophet’s traditions, classical books of Islamic jurisprudence, contemporary Islamic jurisprudence, current fatwas and views of contemporary Islamic scholars from various countries. Data were collected, analyzed and elaborated by using inductive, deductive and comparative methods to gain appropriate result in alignment with the decided objective of study. The findings of this study are watching football raises clash of views among contemporary Islamic scholars between those who prohibited it entirely due to its larger harms to public properties and dignity of viewers and country compared to the gained benefits, and those who allow it with condition by pointing out that there is no authentic and concrete evidence that prohibits it and the harms only involve external factors outside of the is football match rather than from the football game itself. The chosen opinion in this issue is the second opinion as it is more appropriate with the need of community today. In addition, it is also bound to strict conditions which must be observed by the viewers of a certain football match.