with the loss of reason something that prevents it from being harmful, when it serves to avert sin and aggression.

The basic principle, then, is to praise the heart’s knowledge, experience, and pleasure, provided they do not entail an outweighing harm. Indeed, this also applies to bodily experience and pleasure accompanied by the heart’s knowledge and reason, for all these are good. Knowledge is good, the heart’s experience is good, and the pleasure it brings is good; yet something may counteract them and turn them into evil.

When discernment and pleasure cannot be combined, leaving either sobriety without pleasure or pleasure without sobriety, one may sometimes be preferable, and sometimes the other. As for believers, sobriety is better for them, since intoxication turns them away from the remembrance of Allah and from prayer, and sows enmity and hatred among them. Likewise, reason is better for them because it increases their faith.

As for disbelievers, a disbeliever’s loss of reason is better both for him and for the Muslims. For him, it does not turn him away from the remembrance of Allah and from prayer; rather, it turns him away from disbelief and wickedness. For the Muslims, intoxication sows enmity and hatred among the disbelievers, which benefits the believers. This does not mean permitting wine or intoxication; rather, it means averting the greater of two evils by means of the lesser.

For this reason, I used to instruct our companions not to withhold wine from the enemies