All Intoxicants

The Prophet (sal Allahu alaihi wa sallam) was once asked about mead. He replied, “Every drink that intoxicates is forbidden.” [Sahih Bukhari]

Al-Hasan al-Basri said, “How could any man ruin his mind, which is the most beloved thing in God’s creation, with wine?” An Arab was once asked why he did not drink, and he replied, “By God, I am not happy with my mind when it is sound, so why should I corrupt it even further?” [The Seventy-Seven Branches of Faith by Imam al-Bayhaqi]

"According to official statistics, of the 5059 people who died in traffic accidents in Britain in 1988, more than a thousand lost their lives as a result of alcohol consumption. Similarly, over a third of British hospital beds are occupied with alcohol-related cases. But it is not merely people’s health that suffers from alcohol use. More than half of Britain’s violent crimes are committed ‘under the influence’. The U.K. economy loses more than 2 billion pounds annually thanks to this drug. Suicide, sterility, depression, brain damage, child neglect, wife beating – these are just some of the other effects of this habit forming narcotic." [Translator’s note, The Seventy-Seven Branches of Faith, p.30, The Quilliam Press]

A wise man once asked his son, “Why do you drink?” and he replied, “It helps to break up the food in my stomach.” “By God,” his father replied, “it will break up your religion even more surely.” [The Seventy-Seven Branches of Faith]

Allah (subhana wa ta’ala) says in the Quran, “Say: My Lord has forbidden only shameful acts, be they open or secret, and sin, and wrongful oppression.” [Surah 7: 133] Imam al-Bayhaqi says: “In this verse, ‘sin’ [ithm] is forbidden explicitly, and it is said that ‘ithm’ is actually one of the names of wine, as is shown by the following verse:
                                           I drank ithm, until my mind went awry,
                                           Truly, ithm does away with the minds of men.