and keep you from the remembrance of Allah and from prayer. Will you not then desist?”
He described all four as defilement from Satan’s handiwork and commanded that they be shunned. He then singled out wine and gambling, stating that Satan seeks through them to stir up enmity and hatred among you and to keep you from the remembrance of Allah and from prayer. He threatens those who do not desist with His words, Most High:
“Will you not then desist?”
Likewise, He made success conditional upon shunning them, saying:
“So shun them that you may prosper.”
Hence it is said that this verse establishes the prohibition of wine and gambling in several ways. It is well known that, once wine was commanded to be shunned, any involvement with it became forbidden. Thus, it is impermissible to keep it or drink even a little of it. Indeed, the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, ordered that it be poured away, its wineskins cut open, and its jars broken. He forbade turning it into vinegar, even when it belonged to orphans and had been purchased for them before the prohibition.
Thus, the correct view—expressly stated by Ahmad, Ibn al-Mubārak, and others—is that no wine enjoys legal protection, whether intended for vinegar-making or otherwise. Anyone making vinegar must alter the juice before it ferments, by adding vinegar to it or using some other means of preventing fermentation. Indeed, the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, “forbade steeping two kinds of fruit together,” lest one intensify the effect of the other, leading someone to drink intoxicating wine unknowingly.
He also forbade preparing steeped drinks in vessels in which intoxicating fermentation develops without one knowing what is happening inside them, such as gourds, earthenware jars, pitch-coated vessels, and hollowed-out wooden vessels. He ordered that such drinks be prepared in waterskins with their mouths tied shut, because the development of intoxicating fermentation can be detected: if it occurs in the drink, the skin splits. There is, however, disagreement over whether these rules, or some of them, were abrogated; this is not the place to discuss it. The point is to block any means that might lead to drinking wine in any way.