to the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—and he said, “Do you not know that it has been prohibited?” A man then whispered to him, “Sell it,” so the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—asked, “What did you whisper to him?” He replied, “I told him to sell it.” The Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—said, “Indeed, the One who prohibited drinking it has prohibited selling it.” The man then opened the wineskin until all that was in it had drained away. (1) This occurred in the presence of the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—and he did not tell him to wash it. This was unquestionably after its prohibition.
- The basic presumption is purity unless evidence establishes impurity, and there is no such evidence here. Prohibition does not necessarily entail impurity, as poison is prohibited but is not impure.
The answer to the verse is that the impurity intended is moral, not physical, for two reasons:
First, it is mentioned alongside idols, divining arrows, and gambling, whose impurity is moral.
Second, the term “filth” here is qualified by His saying, “the work of Satan”; it is therefore filth in practice, not intrinsic filth that renders these things impure.
As for His Most High saying, “And their Lord will give them a purifying drink to drink” [al-Insan: 21], we do not infer rulings from the implied meaning of anything among the delights of the Hereafter, for we are discussing the rulings of this world.
Moreover, everything in Paradise is pure; there is nothing impure there.
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