WINE AND ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES

All alcoholic beverages are poisons. This fact is written in all medical books today. It is stated as follows in a valuable chemistry textbook being used as a basis of instruction in high schools: “Alcoholic beverages, which have been consumed as intoxicants since ancient times, were being spoken of as a stimulant and as a condiment when taken in reasonable doses. Recent scientific facts, however, have proven that even a very small amount of alcohol is ruinous to the machinery of human body and that its harmful effects survive throughout generations.”

Ibni ’Âbidîn provides the following information in the two hundred and eighty-ninth (289) page of the fifth volume:

Wine [hamr, vin, wein] is harâm in all four Madhhabs, (i.e. in the four Madhhabs called Hanafî, Mâlikî, Shâfi’î, and Hanbalî.) It is sinful to drink it or to use it in any other manner. The only two permissible ways of utilizing it is to make vinegar from it and for a person about to die of thirst to drink (only) an amount of it enough to protect him or her from death and thereby to substitute it for (unavailable) water.