Shaykh ʿAbd al-Qādir ʿAwda said: Islamic law has categorically prohibited wine, for it deems wine the mother of all abominations and views it as a waste of one’s soul, intellect, health, and wealth. The sharia declared wine unlawful fourteen centuries ago and put the ban into immediate effect from the moment the prohibitory verses were revealed. The Muslim world continued to outlaw wine until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when Muslim lands began to enforce secular statutes and suspend the sharia; under those newly promulgated laws, wine became permissible for the drinker.

At the very time Muslims are making wine lawful, the call to ban it is spreading through every non-Muslim country. There is scarcely a land without one or more groups campaigning for prohibition, using every available means to expose its grave harms—harms that afflict the drinker in particular and entire peoples in general. Because of this vigorous campaign, non-Muslim states have begun to implement the idea of prohibition. Today the non-Muslim world is preparing to outlaw wine now that it has been scientifically proven to inflict severe damage on societies, while Muslims remain fast asleep, oblivious to what is happening around them. Very soon, God willing, the day will come when wine is banned universally in every country, and the miracle of Islamic law will thereby be fulfilled.