Protecting Ourselves from Sports Betting

Protecting Ourselves from Sports Betting

Brothers and sisters, I want you to imagine for a moment a brother, someone you might know. He sits at the dinner table with his wife and his kids and he is overwhelmed and distressed and grieving quietly and silently. Because he is in debt for $10,000.

He can't tell anybody and the way that he got into that debt was through betting and gambling. I want you to imagine a family who is surprised to find that their credit card statement that they always have under control all of a sudden has a charge of $15,000. Because one of their teenagers had been betting from his bedroom, betting online.

And these are real scenarios that are happening in almost every community in the country as we are experiencing now the explosion of online betting and gambling. And this is what I wanted to talk to you about in this khutbah insha'Allah ta'ala briefly.

How Did We Get Here?

This is a scenario that we couldn't have imagined 10 years ago, when before there was always this friction that existed between a person and gambling. You had to go to Las Vegas. You had to go to a casino. You had to go to a bookie. And that presence, that friction, prevented a lot of people from engaging — much like years before, if a person wanted to indulge in the vices that the adult entertainment industry had to provide, they would have to go to a location. And that friction of being seen in these off-putting places would be enough to make people avoid it. Many people avoided it.

But with the presence of the internet on our smart devices, our cell phones, it made adult entertainment much more easier to consume in the privacy of a person's home. And we are now at that stage with online gambling.

Every time you watch a live sports event, you see a commercial brought to you by some online gambling platform. This timeout is brought to you by this one. This halftime is brought to you by this. And you are constantly being fed parlays and the opportunity to bet and the opportunity to gamble every single time you're watching a live sporting event. It's being promoted by the greatest athletes. Major news organizations like CNN are now partnering with these online platforms. And we ask ourselves — how did we even get here? How did we get to a point where, as you're watching the news now, these gambling websites and platforms are showcasing information to you as if it is news?

Sports has always been a unifying force for people. Alhamdulillah, it's always been an opportunity for families to get together and to watch something that is normatively halal. You're able to avoid and navigate as a Muslim. You know when to turn off or to change the channel. You know when to look away from something as it's being presented — whether it's an alcohol ad or these types of normative things. But now you can't watch a broadcast without seeing all of these advertisements for gambling.

The 2018 Supreme Court Ruling

So how did we get here seemingly so fast? In 2018, the Supreme Court struck down a federal law called PASPA — the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act — that had largely kept sports betting illegal across the country. And before that ruling, you had to go and seek it out. But after 2018, just to show you how fast and how quickly this grew, the floodgates opened.

In New Jersey alone — the state that had brought the lawsuit — sports betting jumped from $1.2 billion in 2018 to $10.9 billion in 2022. A single state over four years. Before that ruling, gambling companies spent $23 million on advertising in the United States. By 2022, just four years later, it went from $23 million to $1.4 billion. $1.4 billion being used to advertise.

And who are they targeting? That sophisticated machinery of advertising — who are they targeting? They're targeting young men between 18 to 25 years old. They're making these gambling applications look like they're video games, because they know that young men like video games. And that predatory atmosphere — because up until now, we don't have much regulation for it, or the institutions that are supposed to regulate this have failed us. Lawmakers are in bed with them. The institutions that are supposed to protect have largely collapsed or have not assisted. And so you're having 18-year-olds, 19-year-olds, 22-year-olds thinking that they're going to simply enjoy the game, participate in a little bit of gambling from the comfort of their device — and not realizing how addictive it is, and how they're able to put themselves in very precarious financial circumstances way beyond their expectation.

What Does Allah Tell Us About Gambling?

Now what did Allah tell us about gambling? Very briefly, there are two verses that I want to reflect on. Allah says:

Allah says that alcohol and gambling — وَالْأَنصَابُ وَالْأَزْلَامُ — and divination and drawing lots for divination, as well as idols, are rijs — filth — مِّنْ عَمَلِ الشَّيْطَانِ — from the work of Shaytan. And Allah says فَاجْتَنِبُوهُ — stay far away from it — لَعَلَّكُمْ تُفْلِحُونَ — so that you may be successful. And so we are commanded to stay far away from gambling.

And the next verse after Allah mentions this, He says:

Shaytan simply wants أَن يُوقِعَ بَيْنَكُمُ الْعَدَاوَةَ وَالْبَغْضَاءَ — to create amongst you enmity and hatred because of alcohol and gambling. وَيَصُدَّكُمْ عَن ذِكْرِ اللَّهِ وَعَنِ الصَّلَاةِ — and Shaytan wants to deviate you away from the salah and from the remembrance of Allah with wine and gambling. فَهَلْ أَنتُم مُّنتَهُونَ — will you then not step away? Will you then not turn away from it?

Why Is Gambling Haram? The Economic Wisdom of Islam

People ask and they say, "Why is gambling haram?" I want you to appreciate that Islamic economics is built on the idea of you offering something of value and you receiving something of value in return. You are being encouraged to provide either a product that's valuable to the market or a service that's valuable to the market. And in turn, that person who receives your product or your service compensates you. That's what you call a win-win.

Is gambling based on win-win? No. It's based on you winning at somebody else's expense. It's the definition of "I win and you lose." Now, when a person is on the losing end again and again and again, what is that going to cause? It's going to cause adawa — enmity. It's going to cause baghda — hatred.

Imam at-Tabari said that a man would gamble away his wife and his property during the days of Jahiliyyah. They would gamble away their wife and their property and their livelihood. They give everything away. And then they're sitting on the street with nothing, and they're seeing the man who won their property walking in front of them. How are they going to feel towards them? It's going to cause incredible societal unrest. It is going to break down the social fabric and the cohesion of a society when you see people losing at the expense of those who are winning — and you know that those who are losing are the poor. You know those who are losing are the ones without the sophisticated instruments to be able to win. As they say in gambling, the house always wins. If you are invited to play, you are not being invited to play a game where it is stacked in your favor. Much less — it's not even on equal footing. It is a game where the odds are stacked against you.

How Shaytan Lures You In

Shaytan doesn't come to you and say, "Come, let's put you in debt." That's not what Shaytan comes and says. Shaytan doesn't say, "Come, let's ruin your marriage." He doesn't say that. He doesn't say, "Let's put you in incredible financial difficulty." He doesn't say that.

Shaytan comes to you and says, "Just come and watch the game with the guys. Come join the office pool for March Madness. It's just $20. This isn't a bet. This is something that is a guarantee. You know that this expected outcome is going to happen. That's not considered gambling. It's not a gamble. That's something that you're certain of."

But notice how all of these things are things that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has been moving you away from through Islam. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is the only one who knows the unseen. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala commands you to have tawakkul in Allah. Gambling teaches you to have reliance on other than Allah. "I've got a hot streak right now" — that's what a person relies on.

The Hadith: Distancing from Even the Invitation to Gamble

To showcase to us how distant the believer is supposed to be from this, the Prophet ﷺ says in the hadith reported by Bukhari and Muslim:

(Sahih al-Bukhari, Hadith 4860; Sahih Muslim, Book 27, Hadith 5764)

He said that whoever says to his companion, "Come, let's gamble" — or "Come, let's take a bet" — let him give sadaqah. Not for the act of gambling, but just for the statement of "Come, let us gamble." That is how distant a person is supposed to be from the action itself — that just the verbalization of the intention, the invitation, becomes a reason for a person to give in sadaqah as expiation.

The Addiction: What We Must Do as a Community

There is also another very insidious aspect about gambling, which is the addiction. And it is addictive, like drugs are addictive. And so it's important that we as a community do a number of things insha'Allah ta'ala.

I saw one family where it came to my attention when there were a number of charges on the mother's credit card — hundreds of dollars every single day. And when I say hundreds, I mean in the high hundreds, closer to $1,000 to $2,000 a day that the mother was having on her credit card. After conversation, it turned out to be one of her sons who was involved in one of these online platforms. He was so invested that he was unaware of how much he was actually charging on his mother's credit card.

Having a conversation with him, I realized that nobody grows up — and he was in his late 20s, he wasn't a teenager — nobody grows up thinking, "I'm going to be the cause of my mother losing money every single day." And of course mothers are very forgiving. But us looking at each other with a lens of mercy with regards to people who are going through this difficulty — we have to be able to speak about it. We have to be able to open up doors for our brothers, specifically young men, to be able to get help and feel comfortable speaking about this.

Three Things We Must Do

Number one: If a person feels like this is something they are challenged with, something they are struggling with — feel comfortable coming to the masjid or seeking help. Because you have a billion-dollar, multi-billion-dollar industry seeking you out and seeking to ruin you. It's not something that a person can conquer by themselves. Many times you need to actually get assistance, and insha'Allah ta'ala the masjid and others will be able to provide you with that assistance.

Number two: If it's something within your own family, I encourage you to look at your family members with the lens of mercy — just as if they were going through any other addiction, you would look at them with that mercy and seek to bring them help. Recognize that many of these young people — in 8th grade, 9th grade, 10th grade, 11th grade, 12th grade — have these institutions basically targeting them. And so it's very important that you seek to assist them as best as you can.

Number three: Have these conversations. I'm encouraging all of the parents to have these conversations with your young men — whether they're 10 years old or whether they're 20, 25, or 30 years old. We learned how to protect our families from alcohol generally. We're learning — we haven't learned yet, but we're learning — to protect our families from adult entertainment and all of the addictions that come with that. But this one, I would love to say it's a new frontier, but we're a little bit behind the eight ball with regards to this. And it is one whose time is definitely prevalent. This is a challenge of our moment.

The Wisdom of Ali ibn Abi Talib

Ali ibn Abi Talib, may Allah be pleased with him, said:

He said: raise your children for their generation, for they were created for a generation other than yours.

That's the challenge of every parent, every generation. You are challenged to raise your children not for our generation. Because if you raise your kids for your generation, then you're raising them to live in the '60s and the '70s and the '80s and the '90s — and you're not going to find that anymore. You have to raise your kids to live in 2026, and 2036, and 2046, and 2056. That's the challenge of every parent: to look into the future and see what it is that your children need.

And we are always, always inspired and directed by the statement of Allah when He said:

O you who believe, protect yourselves and your families from a fire whose fuel is men and stones.

We ask Allah to allow us to hear the speech and follow the best of it.