Mustafa Umar – Marijuana & Cannabis in Islam
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the legalization of marijuana in Islamic culture and the various ways it can be consumed, including drinking it. They also talk about the history of the cannabis industry and the importance of understanding its history and the potential negative effects of recreational use. The speakers emphasize the need to go back and look at discussions on THC and THC content of various varieties of hemp to determine appropriate dosage and amount of THC content. They also discuss the use of THC products for pain and the potential for medical benefits of recreation.
AI: Summary ©
Okay.
Welcome to our Friday family night,
about the topic of marijuana.
We're gonna be talking about the recreational use
and the medical
or medicinal
use of marijuana
from an Islamic perspective. So what does Islam
actually say about this?
This is a really big,
topic
that people are talking about nowadays.
And there was just major news,
recently about Canada,
legalizing,
cannabis and marijuana as well. So, we're gonna
try to make this as comprehensive as possible.
We have,
Isha at 9 o'clock. Right?
Is that correct? Yes. 9. So that means
we have like, less than an hour to
cover. So what I like to do, I'm
just gonna give you a disclaimer.
I try to cover topics in a lot
of depth.
We only have a little bit of time,
so I'm gonna be covering
a lot of things
because there are a lot of people who
are gonna be watching this video later on,
1 year later, 3 years later,
and
they want something comprehensive,
and they want something that's gonna be relevant,
you know, for the years to come. So,
I'm gonna be addressing some details that
maybe you may not be interested in, but
there are other people out there who are
very interested in some of these details. Okay?
So, with that, let's begin.
So,
what is marijuana exactly? Okay? So, I know
a lot of you probably know what marijuana
is, but some of you
don't know all the details about it, so
I'm just gonna explain it. I'm assuming that
people
I like to teach from an assume zero
perspective.
Start from the beginning. So cannabis
is a plant,
that's been cultivated,
you know, since the beginning of history. It's
been there for a very long time. And
in Arabic, the term is So
there's actually an Arabic term for that as
well, if you've come across it. And in
books of Islamic law, you find the term
being used as well for the plant.
Now, there are different strains of this plant.
There is cannabis sativa,
there is cannabis indica,
and many other different strains of cannabis.
And what happens is, this is a very
important plant for a number of reasons.
Because what happens is, different parts of the
plant actually get cultivated
for very different purposes, depending on what you
wanna be doing with this plant.
So, there's a plant that's known as hemp.
Hemp is a variety
of the cannabis sativa plant.
It's it's still a cannabis plant. It's the
same plant that's used to produce marijuana, you
know, that people smoke,
but it's totally different in the sense that
it's cultivated differently, it has different, you know,
chemical compounds in terms of the amount that
it has, and it's used for industrial use.
So for example, it's used to make clothing.
It's used to make paint. It's used to
make insulation. It's used to make fiber and
rope and so many other things. So hemp
is all around us. It exists in all
parts of the world,
yet,
hemp production
has been banned in the United States of
America,
anyways, for decades,
but we import it for the most part,
and most of that is imported from France,
even though it's also banned in France.
Hemp is not banned in France, but cannabis
sativa
with a higher concentration of, you know, psychoactive
drugs
is also prohibited
to be grown in France.
So cannabis is the plant
itself.
And what you do with that plant
is gonna determine what ends up becoming
marijuana.
So there's different ways to grow these plants.
And you could breed them in different manners,
you could, you know, process them in different
ways.
And one of the most
significant things for our talk about the cannabis
plant,
is that if you grow it in a
specific way,
you can actually utilize the leaves
to be, you know, ground and prepared in
a certain way to cause psychoactive effects.
When the leaves or when a cannabis plant
is
has the ability
to cause psychoactivity
in in in the mind of a person,
it's colloquially known as marijuana.
K? So that's the marijuana, the drug that
we're talking about.
It has a ton of different nicknames. I'm
not gonna go through that. If you ever
went to, you know, 5th grade, DARE, drug
abuse resistance education program, whatever, you remember the
police officer
giving you all the different names and all
that. Weed, and grass, and Mary Jane,
and pot, and bud, and all of those,
you know, other names. So many different names
for it. So that's
what we're talking about here. Okay? Now, the
flowers
of this cannabis plant, if they're prepared in
the right way, and they're not hemp,
they can actually be used for consumption.
And what ends up happening is, you actually
take
this, so I mentioned, yeah, 2 types of
indica and sativa,
have different effects. There's other cannabis plants as
well. These are the 2 most popular.
So this is hemp by the way. So
hemp is very important in that you can
actually get the fibers for it. It's used
throughout the entire world,
but it cannot intoxicate you. It cannot get
you high. This is marijuana in its form
that people will generally roll it up. So
what will people normally do? They're normally gonna
process those leaves from the cannabis plant.
They're gonna prepare it
for smoking, so they'll roll it, and they'll
smoke it. The thing that they're smoking is
called a joint,
or a blunt, or whatever other terms are
out there. Another way of smoking is it,
it is by using
a water pipe or what's called a bong.
So they'll go and they'll inhale it from
here, and they'll smoke it that way. Cannabis
can also or marijuana
specifically,
can also be eaten. So you could you
could have it in edible form. So
we were thinking about playing a trick on
people,
and actually, you know, in the past we've
done events like,
halal,
we had biryani night, and then we had,
what was the other nights we had? We
had halal burger night. So we were think
what was that?
Taco night. Right. We had taco night. We
have an upcoming,
Chinese halal Chinese night,
with Chinese food. So we were thinking about
doing like a halal brownie night, just as
a joke.
But but we decided not to do that.
Alright. Anyways.
So you can consume it as well. So
you can make it into a brownie,
you could,
you can make it into candy,
and, you know, interestingly,
some of you has anyone ever tried a
drink called lassi, like mango lassi? You've had
that before? Okay. So there's something called banglassi
as well, which is basically marijuana lassi.
In India, it's very popular because it's part
of the religion of Hindus.
Alright? So they actually have this is a
bhang shop right here, government authorized.
They make bhang pakoras. If you've ever had
a pakora, they make,
bhang,
you know, what is the sweets called?
Barfi, and like all of these other, you
know, products. So people,
you can consume it in different ways and
it's consumed
throughout many different parts of the world, and
they have different,
amounts of
the substance to give you that euphoric effect
in there. K.
Alright.
So,
why do people smoke marijuana? Okay. So that's
obviously the most important
question. Right? So why do people smoke marijuana?
Well, they have a specific reason for doing
that, and I I think most of you
understand that. So first of all, let's put
it this way. 52
percent of Americans have tried marijuana at least
once in their life.
That's over half of the US population.
If that's the American population at 52%,
you would probably estimate that it's probably not
that far that Muslim Americans have also tried
maybe at a rate of 10%,
5%, maybe 20%.
Which means that marijuana is prevalent in our
society, and whatever's prevalent in our society
is also going to start to affect the
Muslim community regardless of what their views are
on it. So that's why probably a lot
of parents are here as well. They're concerned
for their children or their grandchildren or something
along those lines. So why do people smoke
it? Well, it's because
marijuana has a number of chemical compounds inside
of it, and 2 of those chemical comp
compounds are the most important to know about
and understand.
One of them is called THC,
and that's tetrahydrocannabinol.
Delta 9 tetrahydrocannabinol.
THC
is basically the psychoactive
part,
of marijuana, which gets you that high feeling.
And then there's another chemical compound called CBD,
which is a cannabidiol.
Cannabidiol
is a different component, but it's not psychoactive.
Okay? And we'll talk more about that in
a moment. So THC is psychoactive.
So when you eat it, when you eat
marijuana which has a THC content that is
significantly high,
when you inhale it, when you rub it,
when you however it gets into your body,
what's gonna end up happening is you will
get that psychoactive effect.
So what's gonna happen in the beginning is
you start to get buzzed. K? So there's
different terms that are used. First thing that's
gonna happen is you get a little bit
buzzed. Initially your distortion
starts to be distorted a little bit in
the beginning.
And then eventually, you're going to get what's
called high.
And that's why most people actually consume marijuana
in some shape or form, because they want
to get that high feeling.
What a high basically is, is you have
an elated,
energetic,
overconfident,
euphoric feeling,
in yourself.
And usually what people do is they they
they exhibit like an uncontrollable laughter. They'll laugh
at, you know, a lot of things.
Whether
they're really funny or they're not. They can't
control themselves, and they'll do that.
Now, different strains
of marijuana
are going to cause slightly different effects.
So I mentioned the two strains, the 2
most popular strains are cannabis sativa
and cannabis
Indica. Indica. Right? So these strains are going
to determine what type of high you get.
And also, the amount of THC that's present
in the marijuana is gonna determine what type
of effects you're gonna have.
After you get high, you enter into another
state of what's called being stoned. K? And
the stoned state is basically, after the high,
is basically when someone is very calm, they're
lethargic,
they're just feeling down, and they say, oh
man, this person is stoned, and they're just
kind of like laying back and they're not
really doing anything, and you can't really get
any work done, and you're not very productive.
So that's what ends happening. And different, like
I said, different strains will give you different
highs. They'll give you different,
feelings of being stoned and different experiences of
being stoned, depending on the amount of THC
you have.
So, this is really important to understand
what THC is,
and what role THC has,
and why people actually consume marijuana in the
first place.
There's another, the other compound as I mentioned,
was CBD, which is cannabidiol.
CBD
does not have any psychoactive effects.
In fact, research indicates that it blocks the
effects of THC.
So the more CBD you have in a
product,
the less effect that the THC is gonna
have
in your body.
K? So now,
what's important to understand is that
when it comes to the American context, when
it comes to the legalization
of medical
marijuana in the state of California in 1996,
being the 1st state to, you know, legalize,
medical marijuana and all of that stuff, what
you end up finding is these marijuana dispensaries.
K? So the marijuana dispensaries that exist, and
now in California, it's you don't even need
a card. You can go there. This one
is the one off the 55 freeway. You've
probably driven by it several times.
It's got the little
plant, white plant coming out with the glass
cube and all that. Hopefully you only drove
by it, maybe not in it. But I
decided to visit because I'm researching for this
project. So I decided to go and and
visit the place and check it out. Nina,
why are you like looking like this?
Research is not okay?
It's okay. Alhamdulillah.
Alright. So what ends up happening is, you
go there and it looks like a very
modern, stylish cafe. It almost looks like a
coffee shop, as you can see if you've
never been in in one before.
So,
if you go there, there's a menu.
And if you study the menu carefully,
it gives you an understanding of what the
primary objective
of a lot of the dispensaries have been.
And then we're gonna talk about the medical
part later, but it's very important to understand
this. So if you look at a menu,
here is a typical menu.
You know, they wouldn't let me take pictures,
and they made me delete the pictures here.
So here is a typical menu,
of a marijuana dispensary. You got your premium,
you got your different flavors. So you take
a look real closely, what you see here,
is you got
sour diesel for example. This is the grams,
this is the cost per gram, this is
the ounce,
this is the amount of THC that's in
there, this is the amount of CBD that's
in there. So here, sour diesel, if you're
buying this type of marijuana, it's got 20.5%
THC content,
and it's got 0.27
percent CBD content. Now what's happening is, these
strains of marijuana have been
altered for breeding purposes to make sure the
THC level is as high as you can
get, and the CBD level is as low
as you can get, for the very obvious
reason of which I was just telling you.
If CBD is known to inhibit THC, and
THC is causing the psychoactive effect of you
getting high, you wanna have the highest THC
ratio,
generally,
in order to get higher and, you know,
feel the euphoric or psychoactive effects of marijuana.
And then you got,
you know, blueberry, which is like at 20.5.27.
You've got,
etcetera, etcetera.
Yeah. It is.
It is an expensive menu. Yes. So so
this is I mean, this is what the
cost is. And again, you know, just because
you brought that up,
marijuana profit is is ridiculous.
Ridiculously
high.
So I mean, I'm not gonna give you
shopping tips or something like that. But anyways,
you get the point. Like, there's the profit
ratio, the profit margins are extremely high. Anyways,
this is a menu, and what what I'm
trying to show you here is high levels
of THC
is what's intended by most people, and that's
primarily the reason why people
are going to be smoking marijuana. K? That's
very important to understand. And what's happened is
over the past decades,
the levels of THC have gone higher and
higher because they're actually trying to produce
strains which have a higher amount of THC.
What's happening now,
you know, in many places,
is you'll find someone who's actually
a producer of marijuana
going to chemical laboratory
to get their product tested.
And if it tests for 19%
or 21%,
they say, I need this to get to
30%.
The guy in the lab has to somehow
figure out a way to get this up
to 25 or 30%, whatever it is, because
it's gonna sell for more money. So now
there's a lot of, you know, fraudulent activity
happening where people are actually getting paid
because they have to meet a certain threshold,
yet there's no regulation of the industry. Like,
you know, imagine you have the USDA
when it comes to, you know, processing meat.
You don't have anything like that when people
who are processing marijuana. So that becomes an
issue, but anyway, that's a side a side
note. So that's what people are looking for
in the first place. They're looking for high
THC,
low CBD,
and that's where hemp kind of comes back
into the equation. So hemp, as I mentioned
before,
is
a strain
of cannabis,
but it is a strain which has almost
no THC.
So it has to have less than 0.3%
THC
to be considered
as hemp. Otherwise, it will not qualify for
hemp.
0.3%
THC is not gonna have any psychoactive
effects on anybody. It's extremely low,
and it's not gonna have much. Whereas cannabis
usually will rain, rain or marijuana cannabis will
usually rain somewhere between 5%
to 35%
in THC content. Right? This menu is kind
of
relatively a little bit weak. You know, some
people are looking for something stronger usually.
So this is kind of, what marijuana is.
K? Let's move on. So what is the,
let's look at let's look at the history.
Okay? So the cannabis,
plant
has been known since ancient times. It's been
cultivated, as I said, since ancient times. You
have people for 1000 of years have been
commenting
on
the harmful effects,
as well as the beneficial effects
of,
the cannabis plant.
You have,
medical
scholars like Hippocrates
and Galen
talking about the effects of cannabis,
the positive effects, as well as the negative
effects. So now what happens is that,
for from a Muslim perspective,
Muslim scholars
did not,
encounter
cannabis
until
significantly
later, on on a massive level, until much
later in the history. So it was about
the 6th century
6th century
Hijri.
Right? Meaning, like, about 1000 years
c e,
or later,
where Muslims actually encountered a product known as
hashish.
Now hashish is extremely important for our discussion,
and I'm gonna tell you why. So we
are talking about what is the stance of
Islam
on cannabis.
Recreational
and medical. Right?
Why this is important is because when you
are
discussing what Islam says about something,
it's very important not to just go and
say, oh, well I'll open up the Quran
and figure it out on my own. It's
very important to look and say, okay,
what what have Muslim scholars
said about this issue in the past?
And I think this is really a sad
situation
that a lot of people don't realize the
value of this. Or they just
assume that, like, you know what? All these
Muslim scholars of the past, they never said
anything about this, or they didn't know what
marijuana was, or they didn't know whatever. Right?
So what we do is we don't actually
go back and we don't look at
what is the history,
of of this, and what did scholars say
in the past? And we do this on
a lot of issues. We talk about abortion,
and we just assume, like, we have to
reinvent the wheel from scratch, as if there
was no discussion on abortion. I mean, obviously,
abortion is totally changed, but there was discussion
on that. We talk about homosexuality,
and we assume that there's no
discussion that took place in the past 1400
years in Islam. And that's a mistake. So
I I wanna kind of correct that.
So
I went back, and other scholars have gone
back, and they looked at
what
when
did Muslim scholars encounter cannabis?
What did they say about it? What were
their discussions about it? And how does that
help us
process
or understand cannabis for our own time? So
I'm gonna be going a little bit on
that to go into a little bit of
background. K? So what ends up end up
happening is, around 6th century,
we have
this product known as hashish,
becoming very popular in the Muslim world. And
hashish is very significant
because it's coming from the cannabis plant. So
like I said, marijuana is produced from the
leaves or from the buds of the cannabis
plant, which is why it's called bud.
Hashish is produced from the resin
of the cannabis plant.
And the resin
is like
it's like the sap of a tree. Most
of you probably know what sap is, you
know, with the sticky stuff that comes out.
So that part of the cannabis plant, that's
where you produce hashish from.
So, it's very important to understand what Muslim
scholars specifically wrote about hashish.
They encountered it, it became a very big
problem among the society, and they've written several
books and several discussions. So, after the 6th
century, you pretty much can't find a single
book on Islamic law that doesn't talk about
this product known as hashish.
And they also talked about banj.
And I mentioned banglasi, and bangpakoras,
and bang chutney, and all of these things.
So that banj is what we're talking about,
also produced from the cannabis plant, and there's
discussions on that. So, if you go to
any book, you know, many of you I'm
gonna mention a few names, probably you've not
heard of these names. You're like, who is
Zarqashi and who is these guys? So I'm
gonna try to contextualize some of these names
for you. A lot of you how many
of you have heard of a book called
Rialdul Salihin? You've picked it up in the
mosque or something like that? It's a book
of hadith.
Anyone else?
Okay. I expected a few more, but it's
still not bad. K. So about, like, maybe
20, 30% of you. So it's written by
Imam Nawawi. So Imam Nawawi is discussing hashish.
Imam Nawawi is discussing banj. Right? You have
many other scholars,
that are very famous and popular. You maybe
have read some of their books, Ibn Taymiyyah
and others.
They've discussed all of these things. So it's
important to go back and look at their
discussions
and see what they had to say specifically.
So hashish consumption
became very widespread,
in the Muslim world.
So Muslim scholars
started writing
separate books
about hashish,
and they were talking about,
you know,
how do we analyze this?
K? So they tried to analyze it, and
they tried to figure out, okay. There's no
clear cut.
Hashish is not mentioned in the Quran.
Hashish is not mentioned in hadith.
So how do we understand this product? Right?
We have to try and figure it out.
So they started writing many books. There's a
lot of books out there you can find.
One of the most prominent books is a
book by the name of,
Zahrul 'Arish by
Imam Zarqashi. Imam Zarqashi died in the year
794.
The very important scholar from the Shafi'i school
of Fiqh from the background,
he lived in Egypt
during the Mamluk period. And what was going
on in the Mamluk period is, there was
a hashish epidemic
where people were using hashish and it was
affecting their lives, it was affecting society. But
not only that, it was tolerated by many
of the Mamluk rulers
because they would actually get cuts from the
sale of hasish, so they were making a
lot of money off of it as well.
Kind of like the argument about taxation is
gonna help us, but someone is gonna be
getting a cut of that taxation or getting
a cut from some of the, you know,
legislation that's getting passed. That was happening in
Egypt
in the 8th century or in 7th century.
So this is not something new. These are
all kind of discussions that have been had
before, and it's our responsibility to go back
and to look and see, okay. To what
extent do these help us to understand
the issue a little bit better. K? This
is the kind of the cover of the
book,
In case you're interested and you can read
Arabic, you can
go back and, you know, check it out.
So,
let's talk a little bit about,
let's move on to recreational use, and then
we'll talk about what,
we'll come back to what Muslim scholars have
to say.
So the idea of
recreational
use of marijuana is something that is being
discussed on a massive level.
California is one of the few states,
it's growing, that have approved it. Other states
approve,
you know, medical or medicinal use of cannabis
and growing and all of that.
A few statistics to keep in mind.
According to one survey,
56%
of Americans
today
find,
marijuana use
socially acceptable.
K? What does it mean to be socially
acceptable?
It means basically, you know, if you're smoking
marijuana
and you use it recreationally, there's no need
for you to do it, you just want
to get high sometimes,
you know, and you just want to kind
of escape from the world, or you know,
you had a bad day at work and
you just go get high.
That's there's no one should frown upon you
for doing that because it's deemed socially acceptable.
K? So one of the studies shows that
56% of Americans find recreational
use
of marijuana,
right, as something that is socially acceptable.
Now, of course, if if, you know, if
we live in a democracy and everything is
gonna be ruled by the vote, and if
that's what the vote ends up becoming, then
you're not you're not gonna find much this
legislation lasting for a very very long period
of time. So now what you have is,
you have 4 main arguments
that proponents of recreational marijuana
argue
why marijuana should be legalized. And I've grouped
them into categories just to summarize things here.
Number 1 is they say, it doesn't result
in any violent behavior
like drinking alcohol would. Right? So it's much
safer than alcohol. So that's the first argument,
that you're not gonna be harming anybody else,
and it's very minimal harm to yourself
compared to alcohol specifically, and alcohol is allowed.
The second argument
is that there's an excessive policing cost when
it comes to criminalizing
marijuana,
and there's also racial bias
that exists,
in trying to police the use of marijuana.
The third argument is that if we legalize
marijuana, we're gonna get we can collect more
taxes cause we can tax it. And once
we tax it, we can use the tax
money for so many good projects, and it's
gonna create more jobs, and we need more
jobs.
And the 4th argument is that it's gonna
eliminate the black market for marijuana,
which is also, you know, the argument is
that you don't know what other people are
putting, you know, you don't know what a
random drug dealer off the street is gonna
be putting inside of that marijuana. So if
it's
if it's legalized and it becomes a little
bit more formal, it's sold by, you know,
responsible people, responsible companies, we can have a
little bit more level of control about what's
gonna be going into it. So that plays
a role as well. So these are some
of the main arguments
that are put forward.
Now we as Muslims,
you know, I'm gonna comment very little on
the political aspect,
here, because my job is not to do
that. If you ask me for my personal
political opinion, I'll tell you on the side
or another talk. But we wanna look at
what Islam specifically says,
not so much about public policy or what
American law should be,
but more about what Islam says about the
product, what it says about usage, what it
says about all of the other things. So
when it comes to mind altering substances
in Islam,
if we go back and we look at
the Quran, and we look at every single
hadith, every statement of the prophet, peace be
upon him, any report about him, we don't
find anything clear cut that is mentioning any
type of drugs.
There's no verse about cocaine, there's no hadith
about cocaine. There's no verse about LSD, there's
no hadith about LSD, there's no verse about
marijuana,
there's no hadith about marijuana.
So,
does that mean it's automatically
okay? Not necessarily. So you need to figure
out
what
precedent do we have to figure out how
marijuana should be viewed
within the context of Islam. So with that,
what we have is
the prohibition of wine,
both in the Quran
and in the hadith, give us a hint
of how we can approach this subject. So
you have a few verses about the prohibition
of wine. I I put the number numbers
over here. I'm not gonna go through them
in detail. But one of them talks about,
you know, alcohol,
its harm is greater than its benefit.
One principle that's talking about why alcohol is
prohibited in Islam. The second one says, don't
approach prayers when you're in a state of
drunkenness or your state of intoxication.
And the reasoning behind that, it says, until
you understand what you're saying.
So part of the definition
of intoxication
from an Islamic perspective
is that if you
cannot process your thoughts clearly,
such that you don't you're not exactly sure
what you're saying or
yours
your your mind has been altered to an
extent where you're not saying what you would
normally be saying
because you've you have a different level of,
control and perception,
then
that's part of the reason for the prohibition
of alcohol.
And then it says it's an abomination of
Satan's work, so avoid it in the clear
cut prohibition on alcohol. So, that's the part
of alcohol that's mentioned in the in the
Quran.
And there's some more as well. And then
in hadith, you have a lot of different
statements, teachings of the prophet, peace be upon
him, about
alcohol and its prohibition.
And what you find is, one of them
says that every intoxicant
is kamar,
meaning it's alcohol, it's wine, and every kamr
is forbidden. This is kullu muskiren kamr makullu
kamrin haram. This is a statement of the
prophet, peace be upon him. It's an authentic
narration. It's narrated Abu Dawood in the chapter
of Anahi Anahi Anil Muskir. You have something
very similar from Imam al Bukhari in one
of his chapter titles, and there's a lot
of other evidence, you know, to prove all
of this.
So based upon
these and other factors,
now what we have is those medieval Muslim
scholars who encountered hashish,
they started processing it. And what they said
was, Imam Zarqashi
first made the argument. He said that hashish
is similar the the high that you get
from hashish, which is coming from the cannabis
plant, the resin,
it's similar
enough
to the intoxication
that results from alcohol and wine,
and it's mind altering.
So therefore, it's what's known as
it's
and therefore, it's gonna be prohibited in exactly
the same way that alcohol is prohibited. K?
And then he quotes another scholar by the
name of, of Al Hafiz Zainuddin al Iraqi,
who died in 806.
He made the exact same,
analysis,
and he said the whole reason why alcohol
was prohibited in Islam
is due to the intoxicating
effects
of alcohol. And I'm defining intoxication
your your thought
is
altered in a way where you cannot function
exactly the same way you would when you're
not there. Because I know there's a long
discussion about coffee causes intoxication too, and caffeine
causes intoxication,
and nicotine causes intoxication. We can maybe answer
that in the q and a session.
So
he he says it has to have the
same ruling. Imam ibn Qaym al Jaziah died
in 751,
he made the same argument. Imam ibn Hajjar
Ascalani died in 852, he makes the same
argument. Then, ibn Taymiyyah,
he died in 684,
he made the same argument as well, but
he changed things and took it to a
different level. He was encountering hashish epidemics.
So he said something very interesting. He said
that,
hashish
is muskir,
but certain types of banj,
which are not
really intoxicating,
are not
So he's differentiating
between levels
of marijuana
or
maybe at that time we could not measure
the THC content that exists in those products.
But he's making a differentiation
between the 2. Hashish is known to have
a very high THC content,
relative to at that time, what buns used
to be. Now, marijuana's THC content, as I
mentioned, has increased significantly
due to certain practices of breeding and cultivating
it. So Ibn Taymiyyah makes this argument.
Then we have a scholar by the name
of Shihabuddin al Qarafi.
It's a Maliki scholar who lives in Egypt.
He dies in 684.
He makes
a very interesting argument, and he says that
hasish
does not intoxicate
in the same way that wine intoxicates.
You There's a difference, you cannot compare alcohol
and hashish because they don't achieve the exact
same effects.
K? But then at the end he said,
but it is still
harmful, and we're gonna classify it in another
category,
what's called mufsid.
And therefore it should still be prohibited.
The reason why I'm mentioning all of these
details
is because if it doesn't already exist,
in 5 years, in 10 years, there's gonna
be a website somewhere, there's gonna be a
group of people somewhere who is gonna say
that we have a
historical precedent
in a in a recognized
Muslim scholar
who was saying
that it's okay to smoke weed.
Alright. And I can see this happening,
but this would be an abuse of Imam
Qarafi. So I'm gonna give you a little
bit more detail about what he was actually
saying. Has anyone come across
an argument like this?
One person in the back. Who is that?
Where did you come across it?
You don't need to mention the imam's name.
Just tell me, did did he
say that Imam Qarafi said it's okay to
smoke weed? Yes. He did.
Okay. Damn. I'm glad someone was in the
audience. So it's already happening. So that's why
I wanna clarify this position a little bit,
because that's gonna become a position that, you
know, somehow says more. So
so, Shahbuddin Qarafi is a very important scholar.
Those of you who've heard of doctor Sherman
Jackson, he did his PhD on Imam Qarafi.
He's he's a very, prominent figure here. So
what is Imam Kharafi actually saying?
What he was saying was, he says specifically
in his text, in his book in Kitab
al Khawhid, he says,
Basically, what that means is he's saying, I'm
making this differentiation
because I have a different definition
of what
or intoxication
means.
My definition,
what it means is, something which impairs your
intellect, but at the same time you have
a state of energy
and euphoria
that comes into you,
and that's what alcohol does.
And he's saying, but when it comes to
hashish,
you don't have that.
Right? You that that's not what's occurring,
when it comes to hashish users. K? So
that's his argument. So he's saying, that's my
definition of muskiv.
The problem with his definition
is 2.
Number 1
is that
peep okay. People who smoke marijuana,
why do they do it? They do it
to get high.
The high results in a state of euphoria.
They're enjoying themselves.
They have some energy before they get stoned.
Right? And they, you know, they they can
do something. Right? So
that's the reason
why they take it. So from that perspective,
he was mistaken in in his analysis
because he used a line of poetry and,
you know, all of that stuff. Then, Imam
Zarqashi responds
with a very nice refutation
to Qarafi's analysis.
And by the way, Qarafi is still singing
his haram at the end of the day.
It's very clear cut in his text.
But his analysis was, Zarqashi responds and says,
that that's what your definition is, but it's
a problem. And your problem with your definition
is, he says that you're saying that,
your
Gaddafi says that it takes away one of
your senses,
but it doesn't result in euphoria.
And he says, if you look at the
people who eat hashish,
they don't cause the death of other people,
they're much more calm, some of them start
crying, and there's very different effects of alcohol.
Right? And he's right in that.
The effects
of someone who smokes weed, the effects of
someone who eats who consumes hashish,
is very different
and probably a lot safer
than anyone who consumes alcohol and gets drunk.
And that is precisely
one of the strongest arguments that people make
when they're saying, well, if alcohol is legalized,
we should be able to legalize marijuana as
well. And I hear this argument being made
all the time, but Muslims are making the
same argument. Right? And the thing is, the
first thing to realize is, Imam Qarafi was
saying this like 800 years ago. The differentiation
between the effects of intoxication on alcohol
and any type of cannabis, whether it's hashish
or marijuana or whatever it is, that's well
known. It's well documented.
Alright?
But that
that's not
fully relevant to the discussion on what its
status is in Islam. So what ends up
happening is Imam Zarqashi responds, and he's saying,
this analysis number 1 is wrong. You have
people who do take hashish,
and
what ends up happening to them is they
feel a state of energy and euphoria, and
they may do some bad things, and you
feel some people who are drunk and they
actually, you know, end up having no energy,
and they fall asleep, and they don't, you
know, harm anyone else. Jesus, you can't generalize
like this.
So this is kind of the response to
Imam,
Al Kharafi's
statement.
Even though at the end of the day
he was saying that it's musid, it's not
muskir, meaning it's something that is destructive, it
should not be allowed in Islam.
So, you got
Imam al Marghinani,
he's a Hanafi scholar, died in 5/93,
he talks about banj.
K. Banj is that type of marijuana product
that kind of was like pre pre modern
marijuana product that still exists in some places.
He talks about banj, and
we'll skip his quote due to time. K.
So anyways,
so scholars
basically talked about a number of things, and
I'll come back to Zarkashi here. K. Going
back to all of these books, analyzing them,
Imam Zarkashi,
this is his table of contents in his
book, his book on hashish. He talks about
the different nicknames of hashish, like we have
so many nicknames for marijuana.
The next thing he talks about is,
what are the effects on the intellect and
on the body
of hashish? Same thing with marijuana.
Then he says, is it
intoxicating
or is it harmful to your intellect? Then
he
continues and he says, what is its status
in Islamic law? Is it lawful,
prohibited, whatever?
Then he says, is it pure or is
it impure? And then he says, is there
a punishment for it within society
or not? And then he goes,
miscellaneous topics.
Miscellaneous topics
is the medicinal,
medical or medicinal
uses
of hashish,
which is again relevant to our discussion.
So, this is all being discussed
centuries ago. So I'm just kind of bringing
this back. So what ends up happening now
is that scholars
had discussions now.
When it comes to alcohol,
okay, alcohol is prohibited in Islam.
Every single scholar said that hashish
is also prohibited in Islam.
Is it de facto?
But then they had a discussion.
Drinking one sip of alcohol
is prohibited by consensus. You can't drink any
you can't even drink one sip of wine.
But they said, does the same thing apply
to hashish?
Does the same thing apply to banj? So
there was a discussion.
The Hanafi school
of Islamic law was the most liberal,
and they said that if you take a
small amount that's not going to intoxicate you
in any way, shape or form, then it
is not considered to
Imam Nawawi from the Shafi'i school, he argued
the same thing even though he's not from
the Hanafi school, and he said you can
consume a small quantity of hashish as long
as it's not going to intoxicate you, as
opposed to wine where you can't even take
a little tiny bit. Alright? So that's
the discussion that was there on that.
The last thing I'll mention here is,
we have to understand as Muslims, the reason
why alcohol was prohibited
was not because of the harm that it's
gonna cause
to other people,
and it was not because of the harm,
physical harm in terms of diseases and illnesses
that it's gonna cause to you.
These may be some of the wisdoms
behind why Allah prohibited this.
But it's not the ultimate
underlying cause, what's called the or the effective
cause, of why it's prohibited.
The reason why I'm mentioning this is because
the vast majority of people who try to
make an argument that alcohol is allowed or
that marijuana is allowed in Islam for recreational
purposes, the argument they make is, you know
what, alcohol, I understand is disrupt disrupt,
destructive.
It can harm your family. You'll come home
and, you know, you could beat up your
kids or something like that. But in marijuana,
you're not gonna do that. You're gonna come
home, and you're just gonna, you know, laugh
at them, or laugh at their jokes, or
even if they're not joking, you're just gonna
kind of just sit down and, you know,
lean back.
And the point is,
Imam Qarafi was saying that centuries ago. We
understand that. That argument is very well known.
That doesn't
decide whether it's going to be
allowed or not allowed in Islam.
What Islam has set forth,
the reason for the prohibition of alcohol is
that it is impairing your intellect from being
able to function in the way you normally
would in the first place.
If that's what alcohol is doing for you,
imagine you're gonna go and say, I'm gonna
I'm gonna get drunk, I'm gonna lock myself
in a room,
and I'm gonna chain my hands down, and
I'm just gonna sit there, and I'm just
gonna be drunk. I'm not harming anyone.
I can't harm anyone. My family say everybody
is safe.
What's the problem with it? Alright? And Allah
is still saying, there's a problem with it.
The problem is, you're impairing your intellect that
Allah has given you to be able to
make rational and wise decisions, and you're taking
that away just for the purpose of recreation,
or for, you know, getting drunk or getting
high. Same thing applies
when it comes to marijuana use. K? So
that is the recreational
aspect of marijuana.
If that wasn't clear cut enough,
then let me put it this way.
Every single Muslim scholar throughout history has said
that marijuana,
has said that alcohol is prohibited 100%
in Islam.
The same thing every single Muslim scholar has
said, that marijuana, by default,
or getting high off hashish or cocaine or
any other drugs is prohibited in Islam by
default.
That is the default.
Okay?
Now we move
to medical
exceptions to the rule.
There are exceptions to the rule in Islam.
If you're starving,
you have nothing to eat, you have nothing
to drink, you're in the desert, you're dying,
and the only thing you have there is
pork
and alcohol,
assuming that the alcohol will actually,
you know, hydrate you,
you can consume both to the extent that
you're not doing it in order to benefit
you, like, to get pleasure out of it
or something like that. You're doing it for
the protection of your life, Preservation of your
life. So there are exceptions like that,
that are not necessarily life threatening only in
Islam, and that's something that's well known. So
now what happened was, is that when it
came to
I'll get to that in a moment.
When it came to medical exceptions,
there's a vast range of difference of opinion
within Islamic law.
Scholars from the Hanafi school of thought in
particular were the most liberal when it came
to this, and they said that it's permissible
to use any type of unlawful substance
except alcohol. You can use pig, you could
use whatever it is, for medicinal purposes when
there's a clear cut need.
So let me mention a few names here.
Ibn Nujaim, who's a Hanafi scholar, he said
that there's a difference of opinion amongst our
scholars
with regards to using unlawful medication.
He said, it is permissible to use unlawful
medication
if it is known that the cure lies
in the medication
and that no alternative is available.
2 key things here.
There's a proof that that cure actually lies
in that medication.
And 2, there is no alternative
available.
You have another scholar by the name of
Imam ibn Abdeen, very important scholar. He said
the same thing. He said, it's the same
thing, but then he says, it will be
permissible when the medicine is known to be
effective and that there is no other alternative,
similar to the dispensation of drinking alcohol for
a person dying of thirst. So he mentions
that in his book.
Now, the Shafi'i school has been much stricter
in this, and they don't have the same
type of leniency.
But Imam Zarqashi, the guy who wrote this
book on hashish,
after writing this entire thing, in the end,
this entire thing was about
the effects of hashish, this about hashish, this
about hashish, all of that. And at the
end, he says it's all forbidden, every scholar
has said it's forbidden, and then in the
end he talks about, what about the medical
benefits of hashish that were known at the
time?
Hashish is,
can stimulate your appetite,
hasish can do such and such thing, can
help with, you know, insomnia, it can help
with many other things. So he says, for
medical reasons,
there can be exceptions to the rule as
long as it's proven to be more beneficial
than other medicines.
So then he mentions an entire list of
illnesses
that it is said that hashish is supposed
to actually be helping, and he says, when
you don't have another alternative,
and when it's proven that these illnesses
and these are not very very serious illnesses.
When you when you show that this is
actually proven to help, then you have some
leniency.
So he quotes a Shafi'i scholar by the
name of Imam Ruiyani who died in 502.
He writes in his book, Bahrul Madhub. He
says, it is permissible to use as medicine
even if it results in intoxication,
as long as there is no other avenue
that you can get rid of this illness
with.
Now, a few things to keep in mind.
Number 1,
it has to be the amount that's necessary
for you. Number 2, it has to be
proven to work. Number 3, there must be
no alternative available. And number 4, the illness
must actually be impairing your life function significantly.
Right? So, with that said,
you gotta come we gotta come back to
the CBD versus THC discussion. So we talked
about this in the beginning. California was the
first state to legalize
medical marijuana in 1996.
And what happened until 2018 now,
that it took basically 30 seconds to go
and get a medical marijuana cart. You simply
go in there, I'm quoting
a family member of mine who just talked
to me and said, you know, you're giving
this talk. I literally walked in there, and
I just filled out a form, and I
said, I have some back pain. A doctor
comes on, you know, Skype. He doesn't he's
not even there. He just comes on Skype.
He goes, you got back pain? Yes.
Okay. You realize you should not be driving
when you use marijuana.
Okay.
Okay. Thank you very much. 30 seconds, and
you're out. You got your medical marijuana card,
you can go and buy whatever you want,
whatever THC content you want, and you can
go ahead and have it. So it's kind
of like a joke in California.
Almost anyone who wanted to recreationally smoke marijuana,
they could go get this little card, and
they can go ahead and use it whenever
they felt they they wanted it. So what
happens now is that we have this challenge.
The challenge is that there's this very large
percentage of people
who want to smoke weed just to get
high.
But then we got this small percentage of
people
who actually want to benefit from the medical
benefits that exist
within the cannabis plant.
And that's where this THC CBD discussion comes
in. Like I mentioned, this THC is the
only thing that's gonna actually get you high,
it has the psychoactive effects. The CBD does
not, the CBD actually inhibits the THC. So
when I showed you that menu, we're trying
to get maximum THC,
minimum amount of CBD, because it's very clear
what we're trying to achieve. But then what
we have now is, we have proponents
of recreational
marijuana
who are also interested
in the medicinal use of marijuana, or medical
benefits of marijuana,
but
they're not focusing or they've not been focusing
primarily on CBD until recently.
Because what's happening is most of the medicinal
use or most of the medical use of
marijuana
is actually contained in the CBD product itself.
K? So
recreation
often gets
disguised
as medical use, and that's why there's a
a lot of problems
with regards to that. So one of the
common questions I get is, okay. If you're
gonna make an exception for medical marijuana,
does that mean that we as Muslims can
kind of invest in this market? Because it's
a growing market. Can we buy marijuana stocks?
Can we buy marijuana dispensaries?
Can we do all of that stuff? And
what's happening, it's been happening in the past
and it's still happening now, the vast majority
of marijuana dispensaries are not being used
for medicinal reasons. They're actually being used for
recreational purposes
under the guise of being for, you know,
medical reasons and all of that. So
we have to be careful. Muslim scholars have
discussed this in the past. Because when Imam
Zarqashi wrote this, and all the other scholars
wrote that there are medic you know, medical
uses for this, they discussed whether or not
you can sell some hashish
to people for medical uses.
So the discussion was this, they said, it's
the the summary of their discussion was, yes,
you can sell hashish
for medical uses,
but you can't sell it to a dealer,
that would be something that's prohibited. And it's
prohibited to grow
if you're actually gonna be using it for
recreational purposes, and that's what's going on. Right?
So that's what we have right now. So,
I'm almost done. Can I have a Nino,
can I have 5 minute extension?
Please tell him. Thank you,
Almost done.
Alright.
So
so this is my concern.
My concern is, if we understand what the
history of
what Muslim scholars have said from the medical
perspective,
we may not have an understanding of what's
going on. So, there was an article in
BuzzFeed News. Who's heard of BuzzFeed before? K.
Some of you heard of it. So there
was a lady who works for BuzzFeed, she
wrote an article called, I tried medical marijuana
for 30 days to see if it could
cure my chronic pain.
She had a problem called,
trigeminal neuralgia, TN,
which is one of the
most
serious
pains that people can experience. The pain is
so excruciating
that the disease is known as the suicide
disease because people would try to kill themselves
because the pain was just so bad. So
what did she do? She said, I tried
botox, I tried surgeries, I tried so many
other things. And then she went and she
said, let me try medical marijuana because there's
so much hype about it. So she goes
and she buys a CBD roll on which
has no THC in it. And she says,
this CBD roll on helped me much more
than any physical therapy had helped me in
the past.
K? But keep in mind, there's no t
h c in it. Then she tries an
oil based medicated rub. This has 120 milligrams
of cbd
to 20 milligrams of THC, which is what's
called a high CBD product.
It's not gonna intoxicate you, it's not gonna
get you high. She said it had some
benefits there. Then she vaped marijuana. Then she
used oral tinctures of high CBD oil. Then
she just got high and she took some
high THC edibles and got high, and she
said that didn't really do anything for my
pain. Nothing happened.
And then she said, at the end of
all of this, and this is supposed to
be an article promoting medical marijuana,
but I don't think they realized what they
did. She said, the best treatment for me
was Charlotte's Web Oil. Some of you may
have heard of this before.
This is
a a a CBD, high CBD product
made from hemp.
And like I said before in the beginning,
hemp has less than 0 0.03%
THC content. And she says, this was the
one that worked the absolute best for me,
cost me a $150
a bottle which lasts a month, but it
took away my pain like nothing has ever
taken away before.
Why is this all relevant? It's relevant because
when it comes to public policy,
our discussion of Muslims
on
CBD versus THC,
and
the mixing between the debate of recreational use
of marijuana and medical use of marijuana
is going there's a giant overlap.
And when it comes to Islam, there's no
overlap. They're 2 clearly separate, distinct categories.
And there needs to be more research that's
directed in a way where it's actually,
one is for clear medical research and medical
purposes, and the other one is for something
completely different. Because that's the makeup that we
live in right now. So we got, you
know, the United States of marijuana. I didn't
type that by the way. So, these are
the states
these are the states that have approved medical
marijuana,
these are the states that have approved CBD,
and the states that have approved recreational marijuana.
And the list is growing and growing and
continuing to grow.
In 1970,
the US congress classified cannabis as a schedule
1 drug.
What does that mean? It means it has
a high
potential for abuse, and it has no known
medicinal
value at all. That's what the federal government
says in America.
All the states
don't most of these states don't care what
the federal government says. And part of the
problem is federal government needs
massive studies
to overturn
this actual,
you know, legislation that exists. So there's a
lot of discussion and debate to conclude. Last
paragraph, insha Allah. So we have,
the the idea of giving access to cannabis
as a medicine is something which is debated.
The idea of whether we should legalize,
recreational
marijuana is something that's debated.
Opponents make the argument
that
it is likely to be abused,
and the ease of access is gonna cause
more harm than good within our society.
The second argument is, there's insufficient medical research
to support the medical benefits that exist. The
third argument is, it could lead to lower
quality of life and result in health problems.
The proponents
of medical marijuana and legalization of marijuana,
they say it's needed to properly
assess the effects of cannabis from the medical
perspective. From an Islamic point of view, there's
no issue with that. Number 2, it's less
harmful than alcohol, to what Imam Qarafi was
saying in the first place. Doesn't make it
halal, but that's what Imam Qarafi was saying.
And c, it's safer than many other prescription
drugs which are already legal, and we have
major opioid problem within America as well. So
all of these arguments are valid.
Alright. These are all legitimate arguments and the
conclusion really is that you have a clear
basis for declaring psychoactive
products like cannabis
to be permissible in Islam when they're used
as medicine,
but it's not easy to
verify
whether cannabis is really gonna act as a
medicine for a particular disease until more research
is done. And it's not clearly identifiable whether
cannabis is the best available treatment for that
specific symptom or other treatment
other alternative treatments are available,
but they're simply just not gonna be researched.
So therefore, we have a problem of whether
islam law is gonna make an exception. And
lastly, we're gonna prevent,
a greater societal harm.
Conclusion is, professor Keith Humphreys, he's a drug
policy expert at Stanford University, I like what
he said.
He said that when it comes to making
a decision on public policy,
he says, there's no framework available that will
not cause some type of harm.
The variables in this equation are freedom,
pleasure,
health, crime,
and public safety. So, you can push 2,
or 3, or 4 of these, but you
will always you cannot get rid of all
of them. You're gonna have to pay somewhere.
There's gonna be some restriction somewhere because you
cannot get everything that you want. May Allah
help us to understand this in the best
of lights. I mean,
I'll be available after prayer if anyone wants
to ask any questions.