Intoxicants: Imam Abu Hanifa vs the rest | Mufti Abu Layth

you said what is an intoxicant and how much does it have to cover the intellect to be hammer well you see in the quran hammer is wine now the question is is other than wine also hammer now so what i would say is if you're metaphorically speaking then fine but in essence hammer was just wine a lot the way you have the name wine and you'll have other things whether they'll be scotches or you know whiskeys or beers and things

like that now you will they have their own names now in in the quranic terminology hammer was just wine other drinks that came about other kind of beers that were around so they were being made out of honey being made out of fruits being made out of things like this they would also be haram if they were clearly of a similar nature in intoxication if they were certainly had some forms of the chemical alcohol in there that were very weak

that an average consumption of that drink would not intoxicate you then in that case they were not haram so if it was a small percentage um you know one two percent these kind of things they wouldn't actually be intoxicating with an average consumption so that's the um that's the kind of uh ruling behind it and that's what the hanafi method uh imam abu hanifah he stuck up for initially and then his mother after him was crucified

for defending so they were heavily heavily the scholars for perhaps two or three centuries after him just slated and rinsed and attacked the hanafi matheb on this topic and it went to the extent that the hanafia eventually became so embarrassed of this ruling that they distanced themselves from me so they kind of uh started to um pretend that it's not really what they stick by or or they start to discuss it less so and and you and they become embarrassed

and this happens in in on many occasions in fear you'll find scholars will get embarrassed of certain rulings that the imams may have stood up for and it doesn't mean you see you have to understand something here when these imams stood up for these rulings it's not that they were standing up for alcohol or deviant practices they were standing up for the principle of truth even if it was embittering and that was their point that was imam abu hanifa's point that

i absolutely understand this is gonna upset you i absolutely get the fact that this is gonna destroy the borders and margins between black and white but such is the truth he felt so he stood for it and you know he put his neck out on the line uh defending that principle so it's not about don't think oh why do these imams you know oh were they into this themselves it doesn't mean that sometimes you stand up for something out of principle that look it's not as easy to declare this haram

okay it's like when imam malik spoke out about uh you know his fatwa on sexual matters that nothing sexual is haram obviously between a couple so and with the issue of anal sex at hand so later maliki became embarrassed it's like

right so the they were too embarrassed so you know some of them started to turn away from me some of them started to pretend oh it wasn't there or discuss it less and the same kind of thing really but it's not you see what imam malik was doing was he was defending the principle it's not about whether people do these things or not but it's about you can't you know that do not uh that do not declare something that allah has not declared haram

you know do not just you utter things stop don't for a moment think you are god you're not god you see so don't you just think you have the right to declare it haram just because you find it uh disgusting or sick or a deviant practice or you find this a problem in society and it may be these things to several people but still you're not god and that's the principle that these imams kind of stood by and hence when imam malik stood by the ruling that

all that really when it comes to food not very few things are actually haram just pig is the only haram creature because it was mentioned in the quran nothing else was haram according to maliki fair so yes i don't mean if they've been offered to other gods and things like that then they are haram or if they'd already been killed and you found them dead because then this was more an issue of food poisoning and stuff like this but in and of themselves no meat

was haram on earth whether it was from the sea the land or the sky nothing is haram bar pig in the maliki method and so you see imam malik wasn't trying to say go around eat tigers or you should eat lions or you should eat elephants or you know eating and like people start to say oh imam malik's saying oh you could eat dogs then

imam ali is not saying go around eat dogs because he said dogs are not haram to eat you see i mean he never said dogs are not haram to eat but he said this principle that nothing is haram to eat except the pig so people say ah so not even a dog so you know so they say ah look what the maliki say you know it's like oh but this is not what he was saying he wasn't saying go around do these things you know soil is not haram to eat you know if you pick up soil and eat it it's not haram to eat doesn't mean it's good to eat so there's a difference between

declaring something haram and between whether people eat it or not but just because you don't eat it don't for a moment not for a split second think you are god and thereby declare it don't do that this one not nice my friend right so and this is the problem that the mullahs had you see that they have this god complex they say allah never said is haram

if god was busy don't worry they say i'm here i'll declare it haram and you think acha char so unless this is your dad's religion [Laughter] then uh you know it doesn't it doesn't really make sense so these are the important things to remember when when you're discussing alcohol or from imam abu hanifa's time or certain or sexual practices or dietary uh rulings from imam malik it's not that they are trying to advocate that people should be doing these things or eating these things or go around

eating gorillas or eating monkeys or eating they would never and in fact they would have probably found these things disgusting but they wouldn't say that you know we it doesn't give us the right to declare to pretend we're god so that's an important point point