Gambling
by Muhammed Abdul Malek

Gambling is prohibited as being a dishonest means of acquiring money at the cost of ordinary people who gamble without realising that the odds are weighted heavily against them.

In the three verses (2:219), (5:90,91) quoted above, in sec.8.9, gambling or games of chance is
classed with the intoxicant liquors, as both are addictive. Alcohol destroys clarity of mind
whereas gambling causes the mind to be preoccupied with it, always hoping that the next time will
bring better luck! Most people think that a little amount of flutter is good for amusement without
realising that for the many who get addicted to it, it causes untold damages. Sadly the government
promotes gambling because of its gain of a large amount of tax revenue. But the people who really
win are the promoters who run big businesses.

If we take the national lottery as an example, and examine its implications we can see who the
winners are, and what damages it is doing to the society. The real winners are the people who run
the national lottery, their shareholders and the government. The government contention is that part of the money is spent on good causes, but the good causes in most cases are projects which are used and enjoyed by the rich, such as the arts, the theatre, sports, national heritage etc. On the other hand if we analyse the contributors (i.e. those who buy the lottery tickets) they include a large number of people who have difficulty in maintaining their families and yet they spend a significant amount of the family budget on the lottery, hoping that the next time will bring them better luck! They hardly realise that there is a greater probability of getting killed on the road than winning a million pounds on the national lottery. Thus in effect the government is extracting money from the poor and giving benefits to the rich.

The full damage to the society can only be worked out if a proper survey can be done on what
proportion of the family budget is spent on the lotteries by the people living on the border line or
close to it, and how it is affecting their families, both materially and mentally. The statistics should
include all age ranges, as some of the news paper reports suggest that children as young as 10 are
playing scratch cards.

Note: Financial speculative activities, such as dealing in futures, options and derivatives, have a high
degree of similarities with gambling. These too can cause a great deal of harm, upheaval and
imbalance, at the gain of rewarding only a handful of people.