“Every intoxicant is khamr, and every intoxicant is unlawful.”

Intoxication (iskār) is the veiling of the mind accompanied by pleasure and exhilaration, not mere loss of consciousness. For that reason banj (anesthetic) is not classified as an intoxicant even though it obscures the mind; the person under anesthesia has no awareness of what is happening. Wine, however—may Allah protect us—gives a drinker delight, rapture, and euphoria, so much so that he imagines himself a king among kings, loftier than the Pleiades, and the like. One poet said about it:
“We drink it and it leaves us feeling like kings.”

Something similar occurred with Ḥamzah ibn ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, may Allah be pleased with him. When the Prophet ﷺ once found his uncle in a drunken state and spoke to him, Ḥamzah retorted, “Are you anything but my father’s slaves?”—an ugly remark, but he was intoxicated, and a drunk person is not held accountable for what he says. This took place before the prohibition of wine was revealed.

The ruling on wine passed through four stages:

1. The stage of permissibility. Allah lawfully allowed it for His servants, saying: “And from the fruits of the palm-tree and the vine you take intoxicant and wholesome provision” (Q. 16:67). In other words, you drink it and become intoxicated, and you trade in it and earn a livelihood.

2. The stage in which Allah hinted at its prohibition. He said: “They ask you about wine and gambling. Say, ‘In them is great sin and benefit for the people, but their sin is greater than their benefit’” (Q. 2:219). Yet the verse did not explicitly forbid them.