Man has been endowed with the ability to discern right from wrong, good from bad and lawful from unlawful. It is this ability of his that elevates his status to the pinnacle of vicegerency of God. This elevated status requires man to keep in view the likes and dislikes of God, who has given him this status, and not to do anything that does not behove his humanness. But man is bound to err; and whenever he errs, covertly or overtly, he lowers his status in the eyes of his fellow beings as well as before God. Here he finds God the most forgiving.
As for alcohol and other intoxicants, everyone – even the consumer of these substances – knows perfectly well that they are injurious to health and detrimental to one’s immediate family and society at large. They are prohibited by God and whenever a person consumes any one of such intoxicants, he loses his most prized possession – the ability to discern – and thus lowers his status. This is why the Creator and Master of humans, in His utter wisdom, imposed a blanket ban, uncompromising and everlasting, on the production, sale and consumption of alcohol, calling it a ‘handiwork of Satan’. Despite this a large number of people pay heed to the persuasion of Satan and stoop down to consume alcohol or some intoxicating drug in the vain pursuit of forgetting miseries, having moments of pleasure and what not – of course at the cost of their health and destruction of their families and societies. The main factor behind the recent gruesome rape and brutal assault on the person of a 23-year old girl in a moving bus in Delhi, as we find in such other cases as well, is this alcoholism.
But, as powers-that-be would have it, alcohol, which should have been banished from our society lock, stock and barrel, still continues to wreak havoc in our society. While we lament at the government’s apathy in this regard, we do not call upon it to enact a law for total prohibition! Why? Because we know for certain mere enactment of laws is not going to effect the desired change in the society. We have seen it in the USA, where Prohibition Act was legislated and efforts were made with full government might to implement it, but the Act failed rather so miserably that in a short span of 14 years, the government had to abrogate it (for details see pp. 70-78)! Therefore, the need of the hour is to consider the entire system of Islam that promises not only a liquor-and-drug-free society but peace, prosperity and success both here and in the hereafter.