Are Gambling and Lottery Two Different Names Of The Same Game?

Gambling is a game of luck and uncertainty, which involves placing a bet, with all the other players agreeing to put their possessions at stake, in exchange for a chance to win the booty. The players can put up anything valuable as stake, such as cash, agricultural lands, or any precious gems that they may have at the moment. Ultimately, the winner sweeps the booty that was put at stake by the rest of the players, without compensating them for what they lost.

There are several different forms of gambling, like horse racing, casino, playing cards, or lottery. Lottery is one of the most popular subset of gambling, wherein, pre-decided prizes and gifts are given to the winners. Lottery is commonly played by the middle-income strata of the society, who dream to win a big lottery one day and therefore, keep investing in lottery tickets again and again.

However, gambling and lottery are not patronized in any Islamic nation because in Islam, gambling is a taboo and no Islamic national is supposed to indulge in gaining easy money, which involves the game of chance or which robs the other people of their hard earned money or possessions. Gambling is therefore considered haram by Islam. However, gambling continues to grow popular in the other parts of the world and people love to play lottery and gambling games.

Although gambling is considered to be a sin by Islam, many other nations in the world patronize gambling and lotteries. In fact, gambling is considered to be a highly fun-filled and entertaining experience, that is quite important from the tourism perspective and draws huge crowds from across the globe, as is seen in the case of the casinos in Las vegas. Several nations of the world including Spain, France, Canada, Belgium, U.K, and even U.S are therefore seen encouraging gambling and the proceeding from the lotteries and casinos are donated for the development of public infrastructure.

Many people, however, prefer to ignore lotteries because they are of the opinion that lotteries are nothing but “taxes levied on stupidity”. They feel so because the chances to win the lottery is very low when compared to the other forms of gambling and inspite of knowing this fact, uncountable people still prefer to buy a lottery ticket and try their luck. Hardly do they know the fact that their money fills up the government’s public utility funds, just as the taxes paid by us fill in the government’s treasuries, and therefore, they prefer to refer to lotteries as ‘tax on stupidity’.

A great matter of concern today is that lotteries and gambling have become just a little too common. The trend is so high that numerous instances of compulsive gambling have also been reported from different parts of the world. The patient suffering from compulsive gambling have been reported to experience temper tantrums, depression, anxiety, and a lot other behavioral anomalies such as taking loans secretly from everyone around them to obtain the money to participate in another round of gambling. Although their family members do not give their approval, these patient disobey them and go ahead to participate in gambling. They become very violent and aggressive and desperately want to gamble and win by all means.

Playing gambling at the cost of someone’s hard earned money or possessions is absolutely unethical. Instead, lottery and gambling can be played purely for fun, using less valuable gifts and token amounts as this will not harm anyone and everyone can enjoy the game irrespective of whet

Graham McKenzie is the content coordinator for a South African UK Lottery Ticket website, where you can buy tickets to play the UK lottery and participate in the Euro millions draw.