Yes I've heard vague saying about music etc. I didn't know pervasive the different attitudes are. Because I know, a certain amount of traditional music is allowed with all the belly dancing, veil dancing etc.
Well even that music is not really 'traditional', in a sense. It is generally based around the maqamat, from what little I know (not a musicologist, but I have friends who studied bellydancing professionally), which marks it as secular folk music, such as is deemed not appropriate by the religion's hardliners. So that stuff would theoretically have to go, too.
I did hear their is a special prohibition or taboo against the female voice (It's suppose to be a sing of End times corruption). So some Muslims might not like this video so much. (a good one for Easter).
Hahaha. No, I imagine they wouldn't, on multiple levels.
But I think it's more that Muslims are very strict regarding the division between the secular and the religious when it comes to music. I can get behind that, as the same is true (or supposed to be) in churches, and definitely still is in most Coptic churches (except for those that have erroneously embraced western "praise and worship" music in lieu of, e.g., Psalm 150 for communion; I've never actually been to one of those, but I know they exist and were a big enough issue some years ago that HH Pope Tawadros sent a committee of bishops to the USA, specifically to the D.C. area where the problem had been festering for a long time, to investigate it and return those errant parishes to Orthodoxy). I had a young Coptic friend of maybe 20 years of age stand up to her own priest once, protesting that she could not play the hymn "Wa Habibi" on piano during a recital because that's not a Coptic hymn, and besides, it was to be held in some part of the church building, and it is not appropriate to have a melody-producing instrument like the piano in church!
Some people might consider that an 'extreme' attitude, but I took it as a sign that the Coptic Orthodox Church will weather the storm of Protestant influences and adjust to being both American
and Orthodox with time. Similar opinions were expressed in sociolinguistic interviews I conducted (in the course of getting my masters in linguistics some years ago) among the youth ages 18-21 or so at the monastery of St. Shenouda the Archimandrite in New York, who grew up in the monastic environment (going to the church on the monastery grounds, and the other churches of the diocese affiliated with the monastery) and knew all the hymns and said that they would not be comfortable to perform any other chant than that which they had grown up with (the raising of incense, the liturgy, the tasbeha, etc.).
So I don't want to be too hard on Muslims who express similar sentiments, only to say that they (or rather some of them) take it way too far, to the point of defeating their purpose by turning people away from their religion and their idea of what worshiping God is. I do not like to say "Thanks be to God I am not like the others", as that is prideful and against the explicit instruction of the Holy Bible, but I will say I am glad to say that there is both the strong tradition of the Coptic Orthodox Church being kept alive from generation to generation, but also adaptation within acceptable limits among all of our churches in the OO communion to create a kind of popular music, too, so that we really don't need to rely on or introduce western 'praise and worship' music in place of theologically and practically Orthodox modes of modern worship (which is not to knock the western songs, only to say that they have their own roots and their own theology, which is not in the Orthodox Church, so they do not belong in the Orthodox Church).
I'm thinking here of the phenomenon of Coptic taraneem in Arabic as presented for popular consumption (i.e., outside of church/liturgy) in Egypt and other Arabic-speaking countries:
"We prostrate at the name of the Holy Trinity" as sung by Magdy Said (okay, maybe the world didn't
need a reggae-ish version of the morning doxology, but here it is, and I'll be darned if it doesn't help me remember it a little bit better, since it's not in my language anyway)
The others even have what they have dubbed "Gospel music", with the appropriate instrumentation as befits their given regions/cultures.
Syriac Orthodox gospel music by Gudo d-Mor Ephrem (I believe this is another standard hymn text, just set to what you might find as a common type of melody for the folk music of the Syriac areas of Turkey):
Ethiopian singer Theodoros Tadesse sings 'Orthodox gospel music' (even though the Ethiopians use drums in some of their paraliturgical services, you can tell that this goes further than that and is meant to be consumed 'secularly' due to the presence of the one-stringed masinqo fiddle, which has never been incorporated into the EOTC properly, but is found in traditional Azmari folk music of the Ethiopian highlands):
I only post all this to demonstrate how it is possible to maintain a strong secular vs. church division in our music and still be good, theologically-solid Christians without going so far as to ban the secular music, let alone harm those who might play it. We instead simply establish rules regarding 'religious pop', which are to be followed if it is to be accepted and consumed by people (the danger of course if the wholesale incorporation of unorthodox ideas via this music, so it is a good idea to be careful), as explained below by HH Pope Tawadros II:
The most charitable I can probably be would be to say that
if the Muslims had the correct faith to begin with, it would be a good impulse to use only God-honoring music and other arts, so I do not at all condemn the impulse (since we do share it, in a way), but they
do go too far with it (it is never acceptable to threaten, harm, or kill singers, nor to ban music outright; we instead trust the person to conform all their lives to the faith, by
metanoia rather than force), and I must be honest and faithful and say that it is to no good end on their part, as the god they believe they are serving by their harsh and barbaric methods and mindsets is false no matter how strict they are in following him/it.