Islamic Ruling on Smoking

It was through Europe that Africans and Asians came to know about tobacco. A Jew carried it to Morocco and other Arab neighbouring countries towards the end of the tenth century after hijra ( 16th century AD), while a Christian took it all the way from England to Turkey. It reached Egypt, the Hijaz, and other countries from central Africa through some Magi.

The stand on smoke and smoking in the old world

Many Europeans resisted the new smoking phenomenon coming all the way from America. They adopted various approaches in expressing their hostile reaction to the transfer of tobacco seeds to their countries. Some took a firm stand on the issue. Religious leaders preached against it. They wrote a treatise on it entitled, The dry intoxicants. James I of England was the author of a book on the health hazards involved in smoking. In Russia penalties were imposed on smokers and those trading in tobacco. As a penalty a smoker would have his nose broken or else he would be banished to Siberia. Several other countries enacted, in the 17th century, certain laws prohibiting the use of tobacco.
     
 In the Muslim world the hostility to smoking was much severer. We are told by Hussein Mujib al-Misri in his book, Farissiyyat wa Turkiyyat, that the Ottoman Sultan Murad IV persecuted smokers and arranged for his men to infiltrate their ranks and spy on their private meetings. By his orders, smokers were sentenced to death. During his war against Persia he would put smokers to death, whether they were soldiers from his own army or enemy prisoners. The punishment of a smoker during the reign of Shah Abbas I (1629) was to have his nose pierced and a stick placed through the bole. His son, Shah Safiyy went a step further and ordered that molten lead be poured into smokers’ mouths.

The opinions of former scholars on smoking.

At the time the divine Message of Islam was revealed, and for many
generations to follow, neither Arabs nor any other Muslims had any contact with tobacco. It was only towards the end of the 10th or early in the 11th century after hijra (late 16th and early 17th century)’ that they had their first encounter with smoking. This fact explains why no conclusive ruling on smoking was made at the time and no direct divine ruling on smoking was ever revealed. Those experts of fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) who were contemporaries of the smoking phenomenon tried their best to derive from religious provisions some kind of ruling on smoking, but their task was not easy. In the absence of direct and clear cut religious provisions classifying smoking under one of the five verdicts of Islamic law (inevitability, impermiissibility, abominability, recommendability, and permissibility) it is a quite understandable that the jurists were of diverse opinion with regard to I:: smoking. Some of them ruled that smoking was haram; others were of the I opinion that it was abominable; a third group judged it to be permissible; a r fourth group did not wish to give a ruling one way or the other on account of the fact that physical and financial hazards and effects of smoking differ from one person to another.

There are jurists from different schools of jurisprudence who ruled that
smoking was impermissible or strongly abominable, namely:
” Shirniblali, Ismail al-Nabulsi, Al-Massiri, Al-Imadi, Muhammad , Alaa-uddin al-Hussqafi, Rajab ibn Ahmad, Muhammad ibn al-Siddiq al-Zubaidi, Muhalnmad ibn Saadeddeen, Muhammad Abdul-Azim al-Makki, Muhammad Abdul Baqi al-Makki, Muhammad al-Sindi, Muhammad al-Aini, Abul-Hassan al-Misri, of the Hanafi School; Shihabu al-Din al-Qalyoubi, Al-Najm al-Ghozzi Suleiman al-Bujairami, Umar ibn Abdurrahman al-Hussaini, Ibrahim ibn Jama’an Aamir, of the Shafie School; Ibrahim al-Laqqani, Salim al-Sinnawri, Khalid al-Sweidi, Muhammad ibn Fathallah ibn Ali al-Maghribi, Abu Ghaith al-Quashash al-Maghribi, Khalid ibn Muhammad Abdullah al-Jaafari, of the Maliki School; and Mustafa al-Ruhaibani, Muhammad al-Hanbali, Mansour al-Bahooti, Ahmad al-Sanhoori; Abdullah ibn Sheikh Muhammad ibn AbdelWahhab, of the Hanbali School.

Rulings in line with the opinions of those jurists have been made by contemporary scholars. One such ruling was made by the AI-Azhar Fatwa Committee~ and published by the Islamic Sufist Magazine in its issue of Muharam 1405 AH (October 1984). It reads in part: “Smoking is detrimental to health as has been proved by knowledgeable people, specialists and international medical colloquia. It causes cancer of the lungs and the pharynx as well as artery disease. It is equally harmful from the financial point of view, as money spent on smoking is lost for no return. A meeting on toxicants and narcotics held in Medina, Saudi Arabia, 22-25 March 1982 ruled that using, growing and trading in tobacco are impermissible”.

     It is obvious that the jurists who ruled that smoking was pennissible did so prior to the recent discovery by modern medical research of the many health hazards posed by smoking. Those hazards, far from being negligible, are fatal, destructive and incurable. In the circumstances, taking a soft line on smoking might have been ojustifiable. Not so now with all the incriminating evidence that we have at our disposal. In other words, arguments for permissibility are no longer valid. As the harm caused by smoking has been firmly established through evidence and experience, the ruling must be anything but permissiblity.
The group of Muslim scholars polled by the World Health Organization
” Regional Office for the Eastern Mediteuanean were almost unanimous in declaring that smoking was impermissible or at least strongly abominable.

Before passing their judgement, EMRO had placed at their disposal all the  scientific medical evidence reached by distinguished specialists and scientific authorities on the subject.

Smoking hazards as documented by medical experts

 Dr Abdul Aziz Samy, professor of chest diseases and former dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Cairo University, says that the medical evidence against smoking is overwhelming and that any lingering doubts as to the serious natureI .ef the-health hazards associated with smoking are no longer justified.
He explains those hazards as follows:
A vailable data indicate that the number of smokers who die before they have reached the age of 65 is twice that of nonsmokers; that for every nonsmoker who stays away from work there are three smokers; that the incidence of lung cancer is 70 to 90 times greater among smokers than nonsmokers and that the incidence of acute bronchitis among smokers is six times more than among nonsmokers. Moreover, smoking is closely associated with early death of patients with cardiac diseases. It is equally related to peptic ulcers and diseases of the peripheral blood circulation. A woman smoker reaches menopause much earlier than a nonsmoker. Furthermore, there is a higher risk of stillbirth, birth defects and premature billh. Those who come into close contact with a smoker are exposed to health hazards similar to those faced by the smoker himself, especially if they meet in places which lack proper ventilation. The quantity of smoke which the nonsmoker is forced to inhale in this manner in one hour’s time may be equivalent to the actual smoking of one cigarette.

Professor Ismail al-Sebai, member of the Board of Directors of the World Cancer Federation, has the following to say about the topic under discussion:

      The diseases associated with smoking are considered to be the most serious cause of death known so far. Diseases of the blood vessels, the heart and the brain cause 50 per cent of all deaths in any developed country, while cancer is responsible for 30 per cent. Smoking is a major factor in these diseases as well as numerous other diseases and physical disorders which could lead to death, such as the diseases of the lungs.
Professor Sherif Omar, professor of cancer surgery, Cairo University, says  that:
Smoking has definite bad effects on health. It causes cancer and heart
diseases as well as other kinds of disease. The following are some of the diseases which are associated with smoking: cancer of the lungs, cancer of the pharynx, cancer of the mouth, cancer of the oesophagus, cancer of the urinary bladder, cancer of the kidneys, cancer of the pancreas, diseases of the heart and blood vessels, such as blood clotting and mitral and acral arteriosclerosis, and lung disease.

      In the case of women, smoking can stunt the growth of unborn children, lead to a drop in their weight, and expose them to physical defects and deformities. The mortality rate among unborn children is 28 per cent higher in the case of smoking mothers than it is in the case of nonsmokers. Likewise smoking speeds up the onset of the menopause.
     
 The fetus is directly affected by smoking. The ill effects of smoking are transferred from the mother’s blood to her unborn child through the umblical cord and may last after birth until the child is eleven years old.
     
The opinions expressed by Professor Sherif Omar were endorsed by Professor Ismail al-Sebai as well as by Professor Abdul Basit al-Asar, Head of the Department of Cancer Biology, the National Institute for Cancer.
    
Dr Mahmoud Muhammad al-Marzabany, Professor of Chemo- pharmacology and Experimental Cancer Therapy at the National Institute for Cancer, Cairo University, says:
     It has been proved beyond any doubt that smoking causes numerous diseases of which the most serious are diseases of the respiratory tract, heart diseases and arteriosclerosis. It is a major factor in the development of lung cancer as well as cancer of the oesophagus, pancreas and the urinary bladder.

Smoking hazards also affect nonsmokers who are forced to inhale smoke as a result of living or working with smokers.
Professor Muhammad Ali al-Barr, member of the Royal College of Physicians, says that ” Smoking hazards are not to be denied. It is far more dangerous to health than the plague, cholera. smallpox, tuberculosis and leprosy combined”.

As we have already mentioned, the World Health Organization Eastern  Mediterranean Regional Office placed at the disposal of the group of eminent  scholars whom it polled in connection with smoking all the available medical  reports and studies prepared by specialists and distinguished physicians on the  question of smoking. By so doing the Office was trying to spare these distinguished scholars the difficulty of having to pass judgement on a particular matter without being fully equipped with the necessary information as to its drawbacks and hazards. Thus these eminent scholars had the good fortune of having access to information and scientific evidence which other religious scholars did not have. They were able to acquaint themselves with the real damage caused by smoking, and the hazards associated with the use of tobacco.
Basing their judgement on established facts, strong arguments and undisputable findings, they were in agreement that smoking was haram or at least strongly abominable. If jurists in former times were of a different view it was because they did not have at their disposal the same emphatic evidence. As their conception of smoking hazards was based on mere assumption rather than established truth their ruling was of a similar nature to their assumptions.