Proofs of Prophethood
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Prohibiting Intoxicants: The Prophet’s ﷺ Message
The prohibition of alcohol and other intoxicants within Islam is perhaps the easiest of prohibitions to understand. The dangers of alcohol are well-known, causing everything from poor decisions to traffic accidents to illness, disability, and pre-mature death. Sh. Mohammad Elshinawy explains how Prophet Muhammad ﷺ encouraged temperance through the conviction of faith, and the message of Islam continues to offer a path for individuals struggling with addiction to reclaim their lives.
The Proofs for the Prophethood of Muhammad ﷺ eBook is available now. Download your copy here.
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Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. Islam is known for its categorical rejection of alcohol consumption. And perhaps this is the easiest of the wise and merciful prohibitions of Muhammad's message to appreciate. And you know, this prohibition being contrary to the prevailing norms at his time among pagans, Jews and Christians argues against the notion that his ministry was some accumulation of all of the teachings around him that he absorbed and created a message, concocted it from his surrounding environment. But in addition to it being revolutionary and original, it was incredibly wise in its framing. Number one, the Prophet Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, said to the people, whatever intoxicates in large amounts, then even a small amount of it is still unlawful. Sensible people should realize how utterly illogical the current recommendation of drink responsibly is. For it leaves the decision of when to stop drinking in the hands of those actively impairing their own judgment through drinking. Number two, in addition to the zero tolerance policy, the Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, prohibited people from sitting at a table, sitting in a gathering where intoxicants were being circulated. And this too is incredibly wise because peer pressure does not just prey on young children, it applies to adults just the same. And we know from our current state of affairs, the fail of the designated driver concept, where one person is gonna sit at that table, but be able to resist and abstain and remain sober to safely drive everyone else home.
It's been 40 years since the Harvard Alcohol Project has imported the designated driver concept, and yet alcohol related traffic deaths have not been mitigated even by 50% since it has been brought into our societies. Number three, and above all, he, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, taught that spiritual and moral refinement were the inner core and the true bedrock upon which moral reform and temperance could actually be built. And only through them can a person be liberated from this destructive vice. As his wife Aisha, may Allah be pleased with her, said, "'The Quran first came down and brought to people mention of paradise and the hellfire until when their hearts inclined to Islam, the do's and don'ts, the laws, the commands and prohibitions came down and had the first thing to come down been those strict policies about extramarital relations,' she said, "'And about wine consumption,' she said, people would have said, we'll never be able to stop.'" And interestingly, Alcoholics Anonymous, which has hundreds of thousands of support groups to rehabilitate people out of alcoholism, they require belief in some higher power because they have limited resources and they saw that success rates simply were not there when that belief was absent from a person. We really ought to just take an honest look around us. Fetal alcohol syndrome remains the leading cause for preventable intellectual disabilities in the United States. According to the Center for Disease Control, about 95,000 deaths occur annually each year in the United States due to excessive alcohol consumption.
On the one hand, there is the direct toxicity of it. It harms nearly every system and organ in the human body. And then there are the impairments caused by alcohol consumption, which are directly correlated with reduced workplace productivity, increased HIV transmission, lethal accidents, violence, abuse. Alluding to the aggressions triggered by these intoxicants, Allah Almighty says in the Quran, Satan, the devil, only seeks to stir between you animosity and hatred through these intoxicants and through gambling, and to divert you from the remembrance of God and from prayer. Fahal antum muntahoon? So will you not desist? Will you not stop already? Much like today, when we find people citing the supposed benefits of drinking wine, the contemporaries of the Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, also used to boast of their drinking and how it would render them fearless and how that too was a benefit because it allowed them to exhibit valor through their fearlessness on the battlefield and exhibit generosity through their fearlessness and perform acts of philanthropy. But the Quran came and overturned that myopic thinking by juxtaposing these supposed advantages with the inevitable greater harms that are inseparable from them, such as unnecessary violence and the wastage of vital finances. Muhammad's message made Islam's uniquely firm stance on intoxicants scriptural and therefore ever relevant, not subject to being contravened by fluctuating politics or by supposed benefits. And this seems to be playing a major role in why minority communities today, who are often disproportionately harmed
by alcohol consumption, are converting to Islam in droves today. They find in Muhammad's message a path to reclaim their lives that they cannot seem to find anywhere else.
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