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Avoiding Alcoholic Drinks
By Dr. Khalid Al-Jaber. MD
The Ruling:
Alcoholic drinks are haram ( prohibited ) whether they are taken in small or
large amounts.
Relevant Texts:
In the Qur'an, Allah says, "O you who have believed, indeed,
intoxicants, gambling, stone altars, and divining arrows are but defilement from
the work of Satan, so avoid it that you may be successful." (5:90-91).
Commenting on this verse, the Prophet, sallallahu alayhe wa sallam, said,
"Verily, Allah has prohibited intoxicants (alcoholic drinks), so whoever hears
this verse who has some should not drink it or sell it." (Muslim)
Medical Discoveries:
Since antiquity, medical research has repeatedly warned against alcoholic drinks
and reported its detrimental effects on health. The most important of these
effects include:
A. The Direct Effect on Reasoning Ability, Thinking,
Concentration, and Understanding:
Alcohol reaches the brain tissue by penetrating the blood-brain barrier. This
weakens the brain's efficiency. It prevents one from being able to think
properly, be aware of one's surroundings, or know what one is saying. The brain
cannot do the jobs it is depended upon to perform and it becomes impossible to
do acts of worship. Intoxicated people neglect themselves, their families and
their children.
Most of the social, moral, safety-related, and economic problems of alcohol
occur during these few short hours. Many car accidents; rapes; murders; thefts;
and violent, injurious crimes, take place during the hours of drunkenness.
Alcohol related statistics are truly frightening. The ones that follow are all
taken from the Western world:
- Drunk drivers cause 50% of both minor and serious car accidents.
- 85% of rapes and murders are perpetrated under the influence of alcohol.
- 50% of prisoners confessed to having drunk alcohol before committing their
crimes.
- As for the economic loses, they are too complicated to be counted; however,
many Westerners spend more each year on alcohol than they do on many essentials
such as clothing, healthcare, and education. These loses do not include the
money wasted on healthcare due to hospitalization, medication costs, and
follow-up treatments.
- Other hidden costs, such as those resulting from family breakdown, runaway
children, corruption of minors, and juvenile delinquency, are too difficult to
calculate.
The frightening effect of alcohol on the mind and its ability to think, and the
knock-on effect on individuals, families, and society as a whole, is the very
reason that Islam forbade dealing in alcohol.
B. Alcoholism:
Addiction to alcohol is in itself one of its greatest misfortunes. Addiction is
a term usually used to describe the condition of a user of alcohol, the state of
dependence on a substance with the associated compulsive searching in order to
obtain it, and the social and professional dysfunction resulting from its use.
The dangers of alcohol addiction have a number of different
aspects, for example:
Addicts become imprisoned by it and are unable to give it up. If they do not
stop using it, they become afflicted with withdrawal symptoms, which are:
"Violent psychological and physical effects that happen to the addicted person
when they stop taking the addictive substance, which continue until the effects
force them to take more of the addictive substance in order to get rid of the
unpleasant effects."
C. Health Problems Resulting from Drinking Alcohol:
There are virtually no limits to the health problems caused by alcohol. The
World Health Organization recently released a report entitled, "Global status
report on alcohol - 2001," in which it stated the following:
- Various meta-analysis have established alcohol's causal role in a wide range
of physical, mental, and social harm.
- One in four deaths of European men in the group aged 15-29 years is related to
alcohol.
- Alcohol exacts a toll on world health on par with unsafe sex, measles and
malaria, and greater than tobacco - a total of more than three quarters of
million (750,000) deaths in 1990 alone.
- The strong influence of Islam throughout much of the eastern Mediterranean
basin has led to low use of alcohol in most countries of this region.
Reliable medical sources all confirm that no part of the
body is spared from the detrimental effects of alcohol. The most important of
which include:
- Gastritis and Esophagitis (ulceration of the gullet and stomach).
- High blood pressure.
- Weakness of the heart muscle (cardio-myopathy).
- Liver cirrhosis: Consumption of alcohol is the best-known cause of liver
cirrhosis in the West.
- Pancreatitis (inflammation of the pancreas).
- Korsakoff's Syndrome: This is one of the effects of alcohol on the nervous
system. It causes a weakening of the affected person's memory, the ability to
create new memories is lost, and old memories are forgotten.
- Poly-neuropathy (nerve inflammation caused by alcohol): This causes damage to
the peripheral nerves.
- Cancer: This is the second leading cause of death in alcoholics (after
cardiovascular). They have a rate of carcinoma 10 times higher than
non-alcoholics do. Common sites include the brain, esophagus, liver, pancreas,
stomach, and according to recent data, breast.
Note:
It has recently been spread around that moderate drinking is not harmful. That
it may in fact even lower the incidence of coronary heart disease. This story
originated from a group of researchers who noticed that some large, widespread
studies indicated that patients claiming to drink moderate quantities of alcohol
were affected by coronary heart disease less than others did. This observation
appears to be correct, and companies that produce alcoholic beverages circulate
it widely, albeit unscientifically.
Surely the scientific question here is: What is the reason for the lower rate of
coronary heart disease? Does the alcohol itself afford protection from hearts
disease, or are there other reasons?
Many researchers think that the lower number of heart disease sufferers in this
group of people has no connection with the effect of alcohol, but rather, is due
to other reasons. For example: it has been noticed that some kinds of people are
able to control the quantity of alcohol they drink. Such people are usually also
dedicated to a sport or exercise, and are enthusiastic about healthy eating.
They also show other habits of a healthy lifestyle that contribute to a
decreased tendency of suffer from coronary heart disease.
Whatever the case, the subject is still new and researches into it have not yet
been completed. The World Health Organization discussing this point in the
report mentioned previously, said, "There are far less risky ways to prevent
coronary heart disease than by drinking alcohol. General clinical opinion is far
from giving these findings the status of a recommendation to non-drinkers to
begin drinking."
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