Zia Sheikh – Ramadan Reminders Day 9
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Some people perceive it to be barbaric and
very cruel, and one of the next statements
that comes out whenever the word Sharia law
is used is cutting off of hands, chopping
off of people's heads, stoning people to death,
and so on.
And one of the verses that is mentioned
in Surah Al-Ma'idah is the rule
of cutting the hands of the thief.
Allah SWT commands this.
Some people think that it's just a blanket
policy, that if anybody steals, you just cut
their hand off.
But this is not the case.
There are rules and regulations related to it.
First and foremost, the thing that is stolen,
it has to be something valuable.
It should not be something that doesn't hold
any value.
There has to be a minimum value attached
to it.
Secondly, the thing needs to be protected.
So, for example, if you leave your bike
outside, unlocked, unprotected, unguarded, and somebody steals it,
then that thief, although he will be punished
for it, it's not enough for him to
have his hand cut off because that property
was not protected.
It was not locked.
It was left carelessly.
So the owner has to bear some responsibility
for it, and the thief, although he will
be punished to a lesser degree, but his
hand will not be cut off.
The other thing is that the thief himself,
he must be sane, meaning he must not
be a crazy person.
He must be an adult, and he must
not be needy.
So, for example, if a person is needy,
hungry, and he steals food to provide for
his family, then also he is not to
be held accountable for these things.
And on top of that, the person who's
stealing, the act of stealing, needs to be
seen by two witnesses who see the act,
who are interviewed separately by a judge, and
their story must corroborate, and there must not
be any conflict between the two.
After all of these things, then and only
then, the hand is cut off, and of
course, this is not done in any type
of vigilante way, but it has to be
done where there's an Islamic government and the
judge passes the rule, and then and only
then, the hand is cut off.
Other than that, it's not like a blanket
policy in Islam that you just cut off
people's hands.
This is not the case.
In any case, the ayah is in Surah
Al-Ma'idah, وَالسَّارِقَةُ فَطَعُوا أَيْدِيَهُمَا The next
thing that I want to talk about, which
is mentioned towards the end of Surah Al
-Ma'idah, is the prohibition of alcohol, and
how the alcohol became prohibited ultimately.
So in the beginning of Islam, there was
no prohibition on alcohol.
Some people who were sensible, they asked the
Prophet ﷺ about it, because they saw the
negative consequences of alcohol in society, so they
asked the Prophet ﷺ, which is mentioned in
Surah Al-Baqarah, يَسْأَلُونَكَ عَنِ الْخَمْرِ وَالْمَيْسِرِ They're
asking you about alcohol and gambling, you know,
what is the ruling related to it.
We see it's negative, but we also see
that Islam has not prohibited.
So Allah ﷻ in the beginning, He said,
فِيهِ مَا إِثْمٌ كَبِيرٌ وَمَنَافِعُ عَنِ النَّاسِ There
is a huge harm in it, and there
are some benefits.
So even to this day and age, doctors
will tell you that if you have a
glass of wine at dinner, it reduces cholesterol
and so on.
So Allah ﷻ said that 1,400 years
ago.
There are benefits in it too.
But the harm outweighs the benefits.
وَإِثْمُهُمَا أَكْبَرُ مِن نَفْعِهِمَا So it's like somebody
tells you that, you know, anything, for example,
smoking, okay?
His cigarettes, it will make you feel good
for a few minutes, but then it's addictive.
It will give you lung cancer, it will
give you emphysema, it will give you this
disease and that disease, okay?
So the benefit of a small amount of
relaxation is basically outweighed by so many different
types of harms that can continue, that will
harm a person in the future.
Okay, so this is what Allah ﷻ said
right at the very beginning when people asked
him.
And remember that there were many, many Sahaba
and the Prophet ﷺ himself who never, ever
touched alcohol.
Abu Bakr as-Siddiq was famous for not
touching alcohol.
And the Prophet ﷺ never touched alcohol, never
drank in his life.
And then there were other Sahaba, by force
of habit, they had always been drinking.
And of course, it had not been prohibited
until later on in Islam, which I'm going
to talk about.
So this was the first stage, Allah ﷻ
said, إِثْمُهُمَّا أَكْبَرُ مِن نَفْعِهِمَا The harm outweighs
the benefit.
The next stage was when certain Sahaba, sometimes
they used to come and after drinking, they
used to start praying.
Allah ﷻ revealed the verse, يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ
آمَنُوا لَا تَقْرَبُوا الصَّلَاةَ وَأَنتُمْ سُكَارًا O people
of Iman, don't come close to the Salat
while you are in the state of intoxication.
Why?
Because while people were intoxicated, they were reading
verses of the Qur'an, mixing them up,
changing the meaning.
And specifically mentioned in one riwayah is that
a person was leading the Salat, he said,
قُلْ يَا أَيُّهَا الْكَافِرُونَ أَعْبُدُوا مَا تَعْبُدُونَ O
disbelievers, I worship what you also worship.
So basically, I worship the statues that you
worship.
So after these kinds of events started happening,
Allah ﷻ prohibited people from drinking while coming
to pray.
And then obviously, when a person is praying
five times a day, when is he actually
going to get to drink?
Only maybe at night before going to sleep.
So again, the habit subsided and became less
and less.
The third stage took place when it's a
riwayah of Sa'ad ibn Abi Waqas.
He mentions that a few Muhajireen and Ansar
got together in a garden in Madinah, and
they were basically eating and drinking when it
got to a point that people got drunk.
And then the argument started as to who
was better, the Muhajireen or the Ansar.
Sa'ad ibn Abi Waqas stood up and
said, the Muhajireen are better than the Ansar.
One of the Ansari's, again, drunk.
He punched him and put a gash on
his nose.
He cut his nose up.
So Sa'ad ibn Abi Waqas came to
the Prophet ﷺ, complained.
And then after that, the third stage of
prohibition came down, which is mentioned in Surah
Al-Ma'idah.
So Allah says, O people of Iman, indeed,
khamr, alcohol, maysir, gambling, ansab, the statues, and
aslam, which is basically divining or fortune telling
arrows.
They are all rids, impure from the habits
of the shaytan or from the deeds of
the shaytan.
Many people, you know what they say?
They say that Allah didn't say it's haram.
Okay.
The verse doesn't say it's haram.
It only says it's impure.
So basically, you're allowed to drink it.
But it's still not good.
That's what some people actually take from this.
Well, Allah doesn't say haram for a lot
of things.
Okay, for example, Allah says about zina, don't
get close to zina.
The word haram is not used.
Similarly, here Allah is saying it's rich, impure.
Stay away from it so that you can
become successful.
And then Allah says, Indeed,
the shaytan wants to put enmity and fights
between you and hatred between you.
And he wants to prevent you from praying
the salat and the remembrance of Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala.
So people who get drunk, they forget their
obligations to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
They forget their dhikr.
They forget their salat.
And then at the end, فَهَلْ أَنْتُمْ مُنْتَهُونَ
Are you going to stop?
The sahaba, when they heard this verse, they
said, انتَهَيْنَا And the riwayat of Anas bin
Malik r.a, he says that I was
in the house of Abu Talha r.a
who had a hobby of collecting different types
of wines and so on.
I was actually pouring the wine when somebody
called out in the street that the prohibition
of alcohol has come down.
Abu Talha said, Pour it out.
Get rid of everything.
So everything that was in his house, it
was poured out.
Everything that was in the house of the
sahaba, it was poured out to such a
degree that it's mentioned that the streets of
Madinah were full of wine and alcohol.
They didn't ask to and they didn't wait
to investigate to see whether it was true
or not.
As soon as the order came, everything became
prohibited.
So now living in a society where it's
so easy for us to get alcohol, nobody's
going to prevent us because it's not illegal
in this country to drink, right?
Once you're 18 or 21, whatever the legal
age is, you can drink alcohol.
So as Muslims, we have kind of like
there's a stigma associated with drinking.
But the next generation, they don't have that
kind of stigma anymore.
Why?
Because the friends around them, they're drinking.
They're drinking in college, they're drinking in high
school, they're drinking in parties.
So we really need to make sure that
our young, they're not exposed to this type
of thing.
Or we need to talk to our young
to make sure that they don't fall into
the trap of these kinds of things.
And also we need to understand many people,
and this is one of the biggest things
that Muslims are involved in, is alcohol being
sold in convenience stores.
And the majority of the people that run
these convenience stores, unfortunately, happen to be Muslims.
Remember the Prophet, he mentioned in Hadith that
Allah curses six types of people.
Every single person that is involved in the
production of alcohol, all the way until the
selling and consumption of alcohol.
The person who squeezes the grapes, the person
who puts the wine inside the barrels, and
then the one who carries it, the one
who carries it to the market, the one
who sells it, the one who buys it,
the one who drinks it.
Every single person who is associated with the
consumption, or the production, or the selling of
alcohol, has been cursed by Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala.
So this is the reason for this, this
is the detrimental effect that it has on
society.
So that's why when some sensible people in
the 1920s tried to prohibit alcohol, there was
an era here which was called the era
of prohibition, when alcohol was banned from society,
but it didn't work out, because people were
not ready to accept it.
But the reality is that alcohol is the
worst type of drug, it is addictive, and
people who get into this cycle of alcoholism,
it is very very difficult for them to
pull out, and that's the reason that Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala has prohibited it, and
this was the whole story behind the prohibition
of alcohol.
I pray that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
gives us Sufiq non-Islam, or has been
sent in her.