He replied:

Praise be to Allah, Lord of all worlds. Yes, whoever consumes it is liable to the prescribed punishment for drinking wine.

These people are misguided, ignorant, and disobedient to Allah and His Messenger. It is ignorance enough for a man to know that an act is forbidden and constitutes disobedience to Allah and His Messenger, yet say that it makes worship enjoyable for him and improves his condition. Woe to whoever says this! Does he imagine that Allah—glorified and exalted is He—and His Messenger—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—have forbidden people what benefits them and improves their condition?

Certainly, something may contain some benefit but cause greater harm, so Allah—glorified and exalted is He—forbids it. When the harm outweighs the benefit, the excess remains pure harm. Such a man is like someone who says to another, “Take this dirham from me and give me a dinar.” His ignorance tells him, “He is giving you a dirham, so take it,” while reason says, “You obtain the dirham only by losing the dinar.” This is harm without benefit. Indeed, whatever Allah and His Messenger have forbidden, if it is established that it contains any benefit at all, its harm must necessarily be greater.

As for this “accursed hashish”—accursed along with those who consume it and those who deem it lawful—which incurs the displeasure of Allah, His Messenger, and His believing servants, and exposes its user to Allah’s punishment: if it does, as the misguided claim, concentrate one’s resolve and prompt one to worship, then the harm it causes to a person’s religion, reason, character, and disposition is many times greater than whatever good it contains. Yet there is no good in it. Rather, it dissolves bodily moisture, causing vapours to rise to the brain and producing corrupt imaginings. This makes whatever worship a person performs seem easy to him, while those imaginings distract him from harming people. This is Satan’s bribe, with which he bribes the followers of falsehood so that they will obey him