Spends summer days playing football and joking with friends

13-3-2004 | IslamWeb

Question:

In summer, when there is no school, I spend the whole day with friends; we play football and make jokes. Is that a sin? Am I using the day correctly?

---

Answer:

Praise be to Allah, the Lord of the Worlds; and may His blessings and peace be upon our Prophet Muhammad and upon all his Family and Companions.

Spending all of one’s time in fun and playing is a great loss that can never be compensated.  In fact, time is the life of a person, if it is wasted in such trivial and useless matters then what is left for this person to preserve.  Imam Al Bukhari narrated from Ibn Abbas that the Prophet (Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam) said: "There are two blessings which many people do not make use of: their health and their free time (for doing good)."

Scholars said in the explanation of the above text: 'Many people do not know the value of these two blessings because many people do not engage themselves in doing good deeds that can benefit them on the Day Judgement and such people will be remorseful for having wasted their time when they will not be able to recover it.' [Tuhfatul Ahwazi]

Therefore, a Muslim is not allowed to waste all his summer vacations only in having fun and amusement; rather one should spread his time over various beneficial activities.  One has to allot some time for worshipping Allah, reciting Qur'an, some time for lawful fun and amusement, time for gaining good knowledge, visiting relatives, good brothers and some time for engaging oneself in Da’wah activities.

If one manages his time as we mentioned he will have satisfied his responsibilities.

As the Prophet (Sallallahu Alaihi wa Sallam) said to Hanzala: "Hanzala, there is a time (for worldly affairs) and a time for (worship and devotion)."

Allah knows best.