What is "maisir"

In Islam, gambling (known as maisir, also maisira and sometimes called qimar), is forbidden . According to investment-and-finance.net, the term "maisir" was "originally used" as a reference to a "pre-Islamic game of arrows in which seven persons gambled for shares (portions) of an allotted prize". Maisir is prohibited by Islamic law ( shari'a) on the grounds that "the agreement between participants is based on immoral inducement provided by entirely wishful hopes in the participants' minds that they will gain by mere chance, with no consideration for the possibility of loss".

Both qimar and maisir refer to games of chance, but qimar is a kind (or subset) of maisir. Author Muhammad Ayub defines maisir as "wishing something valuable with ease and without paying an equivalent compensation for it or without working for it, or without undertaking any liability against it by way of a game of chance", while qimar "also means receipt of money, benefit or usufruct at the cost of others, having entitlement to that money or benefit by resorting to chance."

It is stated in the Quran that games of chance, including maisir, are a "grave sin" and "abominations of Satan's handiwork". It is also mentioned in ahadith.