I was in the company of an acquaintance and his mobile went off. The ringtone was a Quranic recitation. This is not the first time that I have heard verses of the Quran used as ringtones and I feel that this trivialises the Quran and is, perhaps, against the adab (etiquette) and manners one must show towards the Quran. The Quran is not there to alert you to the fact that someone is trying to contact you to discuss worldly matters.

With the above in mind, I advised my acquaintance that, perhaps, he should select an alternative ringtone. To his credit, the young man gave the matter some thought and agreed with what I was saying. Many people do not realise that they are disrespecting and trivialising the Words of God by using them in such a manner. The Ulama, across all sectarian divides, are seemingly unanimous about this issue. There are many reasons that one should not use the Quran in such a manner, the main reasons being that you are cutting off the recitation mid-recital, this could play havoc with the meaning of the ayat. The phone going off in the toilet – a place of defilement and filth. The fact that when it goes off your first thought is “my phone is ringing” not “the Quran is being recited”. Allah tells us in the Qur’an to be silent and attentive when the Qur’an is being recited. It is just plain bad manners to use the Qur’an in such a manner, worse still are those who use the Quran and background music in the shops and homes whilst going about their business and chores. It’s bad enough that many of us (me included) don’t regularly read the Qur’an which was the intended purpose (“Iqra!”), instead of us being under its command, we have subjected it to ours.