Islam's Response to Contemporary Issues — Page 155
Socio-economic Peace 155 certain modes of pleasure, namely drinking and gambling, neither of which augurs well for the peace and good of society. Gambling is institutionalised in almost all advanced countries of the world. But even in some Third World countries, where it is not institutionalised on such a large scale, gambling is found almost at every level as a small-time individual occupation. Drinking is the second addiction to which societies of the world have fallen prey. The Holy Quran prohibits both gambling and drinking: O ye who believe! Wine and the game of hazard and idols and divining arrows are only an abomination of Satan’s handiwork. So shun each one of them that you may prosper. Satan desires only to create enmity and hatred among you by means of wine and the game of hazard, and to keep you back from the remembrance of Allah and from Prayer. But will you keep back? 22 The Holy Prophet sa , declared drinking to be: The mother of all evils. The two addictions are so widespread and universal in nature that it is hard to draw a dividing line. Politically, the East and West may never merge but, perhaps, in ever-greater propensity towards gambling and drinking, East and West, and North and South, have already met.