(90, 91) “O you who believe, intoxicants, gambling, idolatrous altars, and divining arrows are but defilement from Satan’s handiwork, so shun it that you may prosper. * Satan seeks only to sow enmity and hatred among you through intoxicants and gambling and to turn you away from the remembrance of Allah and from prayer. Will you then desist?”
Allah Most High condemns these vile things and informs us that they are Satan’s handiwork and defilement. “So shun it”—that is, abandon it—“that you may prosper,” for true prosperity cannot be attained except by abandoning what Allah has forbidden, especially the vile practices mentioned here. These are intoxicants, meaning everything that overcomes and clouds the mind through intoxication; gambling, meaning every contest in which both sides stake something, such as wagering and the like; idolatrous altars, meaning idols, rival deities, and similar things that are erected and worshipped besides Allah; and divining arrows, by which people sought decisions. Allah has forbidden and sternly warned against these four, and He has explained the harms they contain, which call for abandoning and shunning them.
Among these harms is that they are defilement—that is, foul and impure in meaning, even if they are not physically impure. Vile things should be shunned, and one should not soil oneself with their filth. Another harm is that they are among the works of Satan, who is humanity’s bitterest enemy.
It is well known that an enemy must be guarded against, as must his snares and his works—especially those works by which he seeks to entrap his enemy, for they lead to his destruction. Utmost prudence therefore lies in keeping far away from the works of this manifest enemy, remaining wary of them, and fearing that one might fall into them.
Another harm is that a servant cannot prosper unless he shuns them. Prosperity consists in attaining what is sought and cherished and escaping what is feared, whereas these things prevent and impede prosperity.
Another is that these things engender enmity and hatred among people, and Satan is eager to spread them—especially through intoxicants and gambling—so as to sow enmity and hatred among the believers.
Intoxicants overcome a person’s reason and strip away his discernment, thereby giving rise to hatred between him and his believing brothers. This is especially so when accompanied by the abusive speech that commonly attends drinking, which may even lead to killing. In gambling, one party defeats the other and takes a large amount of his wealth without giving anything in return, and this is among the greatest causes of enmity and hatred.
Another harm is that these things turn the heart—and consequently the body—away from the remembrance of Allah and from prayer, for which the servant was created and in which his happiness lies. Intoxicants and gambling turn him away from them most severely. They engross his heart and leave his mind oblivious through preoccupation with them, until a long stretch of time passes while he does not even know where he is.
What act of disobedience could be greater and uglier than one that soils its perpetrator, makes him one of the vile, casts him into Satan’s works and nets so that he follows him as a humiliated beast follows its herdsman, stands between the servant and his prosperity, sows enmity and hatred among the believers, and turns people away from the remembrance of Allah and from prayer? “Can anything be more ruinous than these evils?”
For this reason, Allah Most High presents the call to abstain from them to sound minds in the form of the question: “Will you then desist?” For when a rational person considers even some of these harms, he is deterred from them and restrains himself, without needing lengthy admonition or a forceful rebuke.