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| Smoking: Islamic Perspective
A general rule of the Islamic Shar'iah is that to ingest anything that may cause injury, illness or death, either quickly or gradually, is forbidden. Any form of self-injury is discouraged, nor is one permitted to harm another. This understanding is based on the premise that a person is not entirely his own master; his life, health, wealth, and all that Allah has bestowed upon him belong to Allah, and he is on this earth to fulfill a trust with Him, hence he is not permitted to destroy or diminish any of it. This also extends to the earth, everything in and on it, and the environment. Smoking is known to damage the smoker's health, those around him as well as the environment. In Islamic communities there is a major
guaranteed method of seeking advantage and combating corruption, which is
the promotion of good (maarouf) and the censure of abominations (munkar).
This is an obligation that goes beyond mere education and information
availability and involves checking that the information is actually put to
practical use. Every Muslim who knows, for example, that smoking is injurious to health and knows the harmful effects it produces regards it as his duty to inform others about it and make every other member of his community aware of the dangers of smoking. But things do not stop at that. He even considers it his duty when he sees someone smoking to ask him, in a gentle manner, to stop because smoking is harmful to the smoker. He also points out to him that if it is permissible for a person to harm himself, which it is not, it is a greater sin to cause harm to others. The Prophet (pbuh) forbade causing harm to individuals and to the community, as he said: "There shall be no infliction of harm on oneself or others". He also forbade any injury to one's neighbor,
any neighbor, whether in residence, public transport, public places, or
offices. He said: The same attitude is adopted by every
responsible Muslim towards a person who pours the waste of his factory
into waters that are for common use or into other areas of the common
environment, or indeed towards any person who contributes in any way to
the pollution of the environment. Enjoining what is right and good and
forbidding what is wrong and evil, which is a fundamental principle of
Islam, ensures the vigilance of every member of an Islamic community to
make sure that the law is enforced, the common interest is guarded, and
every source of corruption is blocked. Islam makes the protection of the
environment and censure of its corruption a duty of the righteous society.
Health promotion is the basic stage in
protecting human health, or let us say, it is primary prevention. It is
the first and the most important thing to do. To protect people from
falling victim to a disease is to spare them much suffering, and to spare
their tissues and organs much damage and undesirable consequences.
Furthermore it saves society a heavy bill. All measures that aim to ensure the early detection of any ailment and the immediate intervention to check it fall under secondary prevention. There is also tertiary prevention, which includes the procedures followed to minimize the consequences of handicaps and disabilities should they occur, to reduce the suffering resulting from any incurable ailment, and to improve a patient's ability to adjust to living with such incurable impairment. All this is classified as rehabilitation. What is mentioned concerning health is applicable to the environment to a great extent. Quran Hadith
also read: Tobacco and Children |
