شرابی کی سزا!

Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him) relates that (one day) a man who had drunk wine was brought before the noble Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him). The Prophet (peace be upon him) said (to us): “Beat him.” So some of us beat him with our hands, some with our garments (made into a whip), and some with their sandals. Then the Prophet (peace be upon him) said: “(Now, with the tongue) admonish him and shame him.” So the people turned to him and began to say to him: “Why did you not refrain from disobeying Allah? Did you not fear Allah? And were you not ashamed before the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him)?” And then, when some people said, “May Allah disgrace and humiliate you (both in this world and the Hereafter, or in the Hereafter),” the Prophet (peace be upon him) said: “Do not speak thus, and do not help Satan to prevail over him; rather say: O Allah, forgive him (blotting out his sin) and have mercy on him (granting him the ability to obey and do good), [or: forgive him in this world and have mercy on him in the Hereafter].”

Wine — which has been called “umm al-khaba'ith,” the root of all evils — even before Islam held the rank of a part of life among the Arabs, and in the early period of Islam its usage remained. But because of its evil and its harm, an unease too used to arise in the hearts of the Muslims, and, in view of the saying of Umar (may Allah be pleased with him) that this wine ruins wealth and also destroys the intellect, the feeling too kept growing among the people day by day that the sooner this habit ended, the better. On the other hand, since society was caught in this curse, and it was such a habit whose roots had spread very far throughout the whole society, the wisdom of the Shari'ah was that, rather than enforcing its prohibition all at once, a gradual approach be adopted, and in the hearts of the common people such an aversion to it be created that both the aim of the Shari'ah be fulfilled and the people be delivered from this curse. Thus, when some Companions asked the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) about wine, in this connection this verse was revealed first of all:

“(O Muhammad, peace be upon him!) They ask you about wine and gambling. Say: In both of them there is great sin, and (outwardly) there are some benefits for people in them, but their sin is greater than their benefit.” (Al-Baqarah 219)

Those people who already had a sense of the harmful effects of wine, and those who were by nature averse to its evil — for them it was enough that the Qur'an had called wine a sin, so they gave up wine-drinking altogether. But since in this verse there is no clear and definitive ruling on the prohibition of wine, a large number of people continued the pastime of wine-drinking as before, and then, in this connection, this second verse was revealed:

“O you who believe! Do not go near prayer in such a state that you are intoxicated, until you understand what you are saying.” (An-Nisa 43)

This verse struck another blow at the ongoing pastime of wine-drinking, and during the times of prayer wine-drinking was completely abandoned. However, at times other than prayer, among some people the pastime of wine-drinking was still not stopped; and finally, in the third year of the Hijrah, this third verse was revealed, in which the prohibition of wine was made clear:

“O you who believe! There is no doubt that wine, gambling, idols, and divining arrows are all filthy things, works of Satan; so keep entirely away from them, that you may be successful.” (Al-Ma'idah 90)

After the revelation of this verse, wine-drinking stopped completely; the jars of wine were broken, and wine flowed through the streets of Madinah like dirty water, and the command of the prohibition of wine was enforced.

After this command of prohibition, when a man who had intoxicated himself with wine was brought before the court of the Prophet (peace be upon him), the admonition by the tongue that the Prophet (peace be upon him) commanded was by way of recommendation (istihbab), whereas the Prophet's first command (that “beat him”) was by way of obligation (wujub). As for what the Prophet (peace be upon him) said — “do not help Satan to prevail over him” — its meaning is that by making such an evil supplication you should not aid Satan; because when Allah disgraces and humiliates him, Satan will gain mastery over him; or, when he hears you making this evil supplication, he will despair and lose hope of Allah's mercy, and this despair and hopelessness will keep him engrossed in sin — in this way Satan's aim of maintaining his mastery over him will also be fulfilled, and the man's persistence and insistence in sins will also become a cause of Allah's wrath; therefore, in this respect, your evil supplication will become a helper for Satan in leading him astray. And then he said: now make supplication for his forgiveness and mercy.