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Article Excerpt
Which is the worst deed: to kill a man, to rape a woman, or to get
drunk? Drunkenness is the worst because the drunkard will commit both rape and murder. --Islamic saying (Aziz Omrane, personal communication, Tunis 1992)
Given the vast literature of books and journals specialized in the study of alcohol, the existing scholarship on Islam and alcohol seems small. It consists of a modest number of publications about alcohol-related attitudes and behaviors of Muslims and about alcohol in Islamic doctrine--the former from a social science perspective and the latter from a religious doctrinal perspective. Since Muslims constitute about a fifth of the world's population--about 1.3 billion people--this would appear to be an underdeveloped area within alcohol studies. The paucity of research in this subfield is in a way not surprising because alcohol is forbidden in Islam and Muslim countries tend to have low rates of alcohol consumption. Yet the topic is important, in part because alcohol abuse among Muslims is a significant social problem, both in Muslim countries and among Muslims in countries where they are a minority, but also because of other considerations besides social pathology that make alcohol and Islam a timely topic.
This article offers an overview of the topic of alcohol and Islam, addressing such questions as: What are the patterns of alcohol consumption in Muslim countries? What does the social science literature teach us about alcohol and Muslims? What normative behaviors with regard to alcohol are prescribed by Islamic textual sources and how did these norms evolve? What is the range of practice of Muslims with regard to alcohol consumption in different parts of the world today, in both Islamic majority countries and in countries in which Muslims are a minority? What happens when Muslims emigrate from a country where alcohol is discouraged to a country where alcohol is permitted and even positively valued? Since Islam forbids alcohol, how do Muslims who drink explain their behavior? We conclude with an agenda for suggested future studies of alcohol-related beliefs and behaviors of Muslims.
Alcohol and Islam in history
Paradoxically, it was Muslim chemists who were responsible for developing distillation to a high level of sophistication and transmitting it to Europe via Spain. Although distillation is a process which arose independently in different places in the world, Muslims greatly improved distillation technology. In the eighth century Muslims developed that distinctively shaped apparatus which is a staple of every chemistry laboratory--the alembic--for the efficient collection of distillate through a descending condensation tube. The words "alembic" and "alcohol" both came into English from Arabic (al- is the prefix "the" in Arabic). The word "alcohol" comes from alkuhul, Arabic for "powdered antimony," or "a fine powder," later "essence," and still later alcool vini,, shortened in the nineteenth century to "alcohol." Muslims also developed and introduced into Europe the cultivation of sugar cane and an efficient process for sugar extraction which, combined with distillation technology, gave birth to the production of rum.
Despite its formal religious prohibition, the consumption of alcohol has never been eradicated under Islam. The continuing importance of alcohol can be seen through the literatures of the areas to which Islam spread. In both Arabic and Persian poetry the consumption of alcohol remained an important theme, even after the introduction of Islam. In the Arab world this is attested by the flourishing genre of khamriyya (wine, or bacchic) poetry and the work of the ibahi (licentious) poets. Abu Nuwas is perhaps the most famous of these early poets who glorified wine and drunkenness. Wine also figures prominently in the work of Hispano-Arabic poets of the tenth to the fifteenth centuries, such as the Cordoban zajal poet Ibn Quzman, the satirical muwashshahat poet al-Abyad (who was crucified by the Almoravid governor of Cordoba), Ibn Bajja of Saragossa, and Ibn Zuhr (the latter two both were poisoned). In this poetry, alcohol is often associated with other vices, such as homoeroticism with handsome cupbearers (Monroe 1974). The Persians had a flourishing genre of wine poetry before and after Islam--with Sadi, the ghazal poet Hafez, and Omar Khayyam, best known among Westerners through Edward Fitzgerald's famous (and somewhat inaccurate) translation. In the Iranian-influenced world, the consumption of wine was part of a courtly tradition--built into the royal job description, so to speak. In Persian and Arabic poetry wine is often a metaphor which does not necessarily reflect actual alcohol consumption, as in the metaphor of drunkenness to represent religious ecstasy in mystic Sufi poetry.
After the death of Muhammad, Islam spread westward across North Africa and into Europe, north into the Middle East and Central Asia, east into Southeast Asia, and south into sub-Saharan Africa. The Ottoman Empire extended Islam into Eastern Europe. Under the Arabs and Ottomans, subject peoples such as Christians and Jews were usually allowed to maintain their traditions, including the production and consumption of alcohol, although they had to pay special taxes. Thus there has been alcohol production throughout the Islamic world for minority groups, combined with different degrees of illicit consumption by Muslims.
The religious literature on alcohol and Islam
Before we explore the social science literature on alcohol and Islam, it is important to examine the Islamic religious sources--the Quran, Hadith, Sunna, and Fiqh--for their teachings about alcohol. These sources allow us to address some important questions, such as: What do the textual sources of Islam have to say about alcohol? Is alcohol indeed prohibited in Islam? What is the rationale for the prohibition of alcohol in Islam? How did this prohibition come about? Have Islamic perspectives about alcohol varied over time? And, are there doctrinal disagreements within Islam regarding alcohol consumption?
Alcohol and the Quran
Muslims consider the Quran (1) as the final revelation of God (2) to humankind. It is the collected accumulation of divine revelations to Muhammad over the course of the latter part of his life, beginning when he was 40 and continuing at intervals for 23 years until his death. To Muslims, the Quran is the culmination of revelations to earlier prophets, beginning with Adam and continuing through Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and others. The Quran mentions 28 prophets by name but suggests that there were others as well. Muslims believe that these earlier revelations, albeit valid, were incomplete or corrupted in their transmission to later generations. Thus Muslims recognize both the Jewish and Christian scriptures as divinely inspired, but superseded by the Quran. Since the Quran is the word-for-word message of God, it is the most primary of all sources and has precedence over all other religious texts and sources.
Muslims believe that the Quran cannot be adequately translated. Since it comes from God, the very words of the Quran are sacred. Even native speakers of Arabic are not sure what some of the words and phrases in the Quran mean, since they are in a dialect that was spoken in one part of the Arabian Peninsula in the early seventh century, with cultural referents that are sometimes uncertain. Renderings into other languages, such as English, are therefore interpretations rather than translations. The chronology of the revelations received by Muhammad has been inferred by religious scholars, but the Quran is not in the chronological order of revelations. Usually, but not always, the longer revelations come first in the Quran and the shorter ones later. The five aya-s (3) of the Quran that most directly address the consumption of alcohol are as follows (4):
Q1. They ask thee concerning wine and gambling. Say: "In them is great sin, and some profit, for men; but the sin is greater than the profit." (2:219)
Q2. And from the fruit of the date palm and the vine, ye get out wholesome drink and food: behold, in this also is a sign for those who are wise. (16:67)
Q3. O ye who believe! Approach not prayers with a mind befogged, until ye can understand all that ye say.... (4:43)
Q4. O ye who believe! Intoxicants and gambling, (dedication of) stones, and (divination by) arrows, are an abomination,--Of Satan's handiwork: Eschew such (abomination) that ye may prosper. (5:93)
Q5. Satan's plan is (but) to excite enmity and hatred between you, with intoxicants and gambling, and hinder you from the remembrance of God, and from prayer: Will ye not then abstain? (5:94)
The Quranic term khamr is often translated as wine, but has a broader meaning, from a root that means "to cover," "to cause mental confusion" or "to disturb the mind." Some authors have made much of Quranic verses that seem to imply that wine is a reward in paradise, and others have raised the question of how something that is bad (wine) can be a reward for goodness. Examples of such Quranic passages are: "As to the Righteous, they shall drink of a Cup [of wine], mixed with Kafur [camphor]" (76:5) and "They will be given to drink there of a cup [of wine] mixed with Zanjabil [ginger]" (76:17); and "Their thirst will be slaked with Pure Wine sealed" (83:25). A closer reading of these passages shows that the first two do not explicitly mention wine, but a "cup," suggesting a metaphorical rather than a literal meaning; there are parallels of this usage in Christianity in the New Testament in the gospels of Paul. As for the third passage, some Muslim scholars have pointed out that the wine is qualified as "pure," suggesting that it may be wine that does not intoxicate.
Alcohol in the Hadith and the Sunna
The Hadith are sayings attributed to Muhammad, and are an important source in Islam. The Quran is the word of God, while the Hadith are only the words of the Prophet, but Muslims believe that the Prophet did not speak idly. Each Hadith includes a chain of authority which takes the form: "A said that B said ... that Mohammad said X." Questions arise about the reliability of different Hadith because a given reporter in the chain may not have remembered the wording correctly, or may even have made up a Hadith. The most accepted Hadith are those corroborated by more than one contemporary of the Prophet. Among the most accepted Hadith there are at least eight relating to alcohol. They are given below as numbered and listed in the "Intoxicants" section of the Hadith compendium of Qaradawi, with the names of the collectors in brackets.
H254. "Every intoxicant is khamr, and every khamr is haram (unlawful). [Muslim]
H255. "Khamr is that which befogs the mind" [Bukhari, Muslim]
H256. "Of that which intoxicates in a large amount, a small amount is haram." [Ahmad, Abu Dawud, Tirmidhi]
H257. "If a bucketful intoxicates, a sip of it is haram." [Ahmad, Abu Dawud, Timridhi]
H258. "Whosoever believes in Allah and the Last Day must not sit at a table at which khamr is consumed." [Ahmad, Tirmidhi]
H259. "If someone stockpiles grapes during harvest time and holds them in order to sell to a Jew or Christian or anyone else (even if he be a Muslim) who produces khamr, he will be leaping into the Fire with his eyes open." [Tabarani, Hafiz]
H260. "Truly Allah has cursed khamr and has cursed the one who produces it, the one for whom it is produced, the one who drinks it, the one who serves it, the one who carries it, the one for whom it is carried, the one who sells it, the one who earns from the sale of it, the one who buys it, and the one for whom it is bought." [Tirmidhi, Ibn Majah]
H261. "Allah has sent down the disease and the cure, and for every disease there is a cure. So take medicine but do not use anything haram as medicine." [Abu Dawud]
The Sunna is the practice of Muhammad. It is important because...
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