What are the attitudes within religion towards, for example, alcohol or smoking? Yes. Well, smoking is not prohibited in the sense that if you do it, you commit a crime, religious crime. You commit a crime against yourself. This is the type of attitude to smoking. It is not forbidden in the Holy Quran or in the tradition. Some people say because it was not invented at that time. But the Holy Quran does not prohibit things, naming only this should be prohibited and that should be prohibited. It lays down the principle.
Whatever comes under that general principle is prohibited. There are so many ways of gambling which were not found in that time. But the gambling in essence is described in a manner that whatever man can invent would also fall to that category. So halal and haram, these are the terms. What is forbidden to you and what is not forbidden to you is described in principles. And except for some times which are also named particularly. So the smoking does not fall under that general principle at all. This is why the founder of the Ahmadiyya community, when once he was asked, why don’t you forbid your people to smoke and abstain from it as a religious duty?
He said, I am not a new prophet. I am a subordinate prophet, which means I follow the Quran and the tradition of the Holy Prophet of Islam. So I can’t invent anything new. So when he was confronted with the same question, it was not found in that time. He said, but the God in whom you believe knew what was to come. If that is the objection, then you should have an objection against the existence of God and the objection against his pre-knowledge or abandon this religion.
So, well, he was naturally satisfied. Now our attitude is to discourage smoking, and that is all. In our town, Rabwah, it is discouraged not only individually, but we also discourage it by telling people not to smoke in public. Let it remain as an individual evil. Don’t turn it into a social evil, because the moment you begin to smoke in public, the youth would be attracted towards it, and they would think there is no taboo, there are no taboos, and so on. So right from the childhood, they would be drawn into this habit.
They would see the elders enjoying smoking, and they were impressed by it. So this is what we do. Elsewhere we tell Ahmadis to abstain from it, because it is injurious to yourself, it is not healthy. Wine and alcohol, of course, fall into the category which are forbidden, very strictly forbidden. And although most of the Muslims coming from the East do not observe this injunction of the Holy Quran, strictly speaking, even loosely speaking, I think generally indulging in drinking, the Ahmadis mostly do not. Occasionally some cases are reported to me of some Ahmadis who are indulging in drinking, but that is a very rare exception.
Mostly they do not. And when they do, they try to hide this fact, that they remain limited within a certain measure, and they do not become alcoholics. So they do not go beyond a certain limit, because otherwise they would be known, every Ahmadi would know that such a man is a drinker, drinks, because it is a very, very bad mark. So he would rather hide himself. And in so doing, sometimes they drift away from the community so completely that they are no longer a problem. They live a separate life of their own, they do not want to be called upon by Ahmadis, they do not mix, they do not encourage relationship with other Ahmadis, so the problem is solved by themselves.
