Turkish lottery players are betraying their Muslim faith, according to the country’s top religious gatekeepers.

Turkey’s Milli Piyango lottery monopoly is scheduled to hold its annual special drawing for the New Year holiday, and recently announced that this year’s draw will feature a guaranteed jackpot of TRY 61m (US $15.9m). This is more than twice the sum the New Year’s draw promised as recently as 2009.

But the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), the country’s top religious body, has issued a new fatwa (religious decree) reiterating its stance that purchasing lottery tickets is ‘haram’ (forbidden) because “all gambling games are based on one of the sides winning and the other losing.”

The Diyanet diatribe went on to say that lottery winners had won their windfalls “undeservingly” and that lotteries were worse than other forms of gambling because “masses participate in them,” meaning “the damage of such gambling is more widespread.”