in this; it is like the small amount of silver in an adulterated dirham. Every benefit obtained by such means ultimately turns into harm, and brings its recipient no blessing. This is just like someone intoxicated by wine: it unsettles his reason until he spends his wealth freely and boldly confronts his peers. The naive imagine that it has endowed him with generosity and courage, but they are ignorant: it has merely deprived him of reason. Someone without reason does not appreciate the value of life or wealth, so he gives generously out of ignorance, not sound judgment.

Likewise, when this intoxicating hashish weakens reason and opens the door to fantasy, habitual practice under its influence resembles acts of worship in the false religion of Christianity. You find a monk exerting himself in forms of worship that a Muslim devoted to pure monotheism would not undertake. His religion is false, and falsehood is easy to bear. Similarly, in unlawful listening sessions and unlawful companionship, people display a generosity with their wealth and a pleasantness of character that they do not display in pursuing the truth. Yet this neither makes those forbidden things lawful nor invites a believer to engage in them. It happens only because, once a person’s natural inclinations have received their share of forbidden pleasure, he no longer cares what he gives in exchange.

There is no benefit in this for a person’s religious or worldly life. It is merely a moment’s pleasure, like the pleasure of someone committing unlawful intercourse during the act, the pleasure of venting anger while killing, or the pleasure of wine during intoxication. Then, when he comes to his senses, he finds his deeds worthless and his sins surrounding him, while his reason, religion, and character have all deteriorated.

Do these misguided people not consider how this accursed substance diminishes protective jealousy and destroys the sense of honour, until its consumer becomes either a man who tolerates sexual immorality in his family, a man who submits to sodomy, or both? It also corrupts bodily temperaments