And concerning wine and gambling, He says:

“And avert you from the remembrance of Allah and from prayer.”

That is, these lead them into disobedience to Him—namely, enmity and hatred. This is among the gravest wrongs from which prayer restrains people. Wine incites indecency and wrongdoing, as experience shows: the wine-drinker feels an urge for sexual intercourse, whether lawful or unlawful. Allah Most High did not mention intercourse because wine does not specifically incite unlawful intercourse. Rather, the wine-drinker engages in whatever intercourse is available to him, whether lawful or unlawful. Intoxication deprives him of the reason by which he could distinguish between the lawful and the unlawful, whereas sound reason restrains a person from engaging in what is unlawful.

Thus, the wine-drinker engages in sexual immorality more frequently than in other wrongdoing. He may even have intercourse with his own daughter, son, or other relatives forbidden to him in marriage. Yet he may content himself with lawful intercourse when it is available. Drinking wine also leads to taking people’s wealth unlawfully through theft, robbery, and the like, because he needs wine and its accompanying indulgences: food, sexual immorality, singing, and other things.

Drinking wine exposes people’s secrets, as the drinker reveals what he conceals within himself. Many people, when they wish to discover the secrets men harbor in their hearts, give them wine to drink. They may also drink with them something that does not intoxicate them.

Furthermore, wine diverts a person from exercising his knowledge and judgment and attending to his welfare in this life and the Hereafter, and from all the affairs he manages through his judgment and reason. Thus, all the matters from which it diverts him