may Allah be pleased with him, who said: “When the prohibition of wine was revealed, it applied to five things: grapes, dates, honey, wheat, and barley. Wine is whatever befogs the mind.” The Messenger of Allah ﷺ likewise said, “Every intoxicant is wine, and every wine is forbidden,” and he also said, “Whatever intoxicates in large quantities, a small amount of it is forbidden.”

I say: This differentiation, while colliding with these and other texts, also runs counter to sound analogy and clear reason. What difference is there between forbidding a small, non-intoxicating amount of grape wine—whose large amount does intoxicate—and permitting a small, non-intoxicating amount of corn wine that likewise intoxicates in large quantities? Was the small quantity not prohibited precisely because it is a pathway to the larger, intoxicating amount? How, then, can this be deemed lawful and that unlawful when the cause is one and the same? By Allah, this is one of the curiosities that one would scarcely credit to any scholar were it not authentically reported from them; even more astonishing is that the person who adopted this view is renowned for his reliance on analogy and reason!

Ibn al-Qayyim said in Tahdhīb al-Sunan (5/263), after citing some of the aforementioned texts: “These sound, explicit reports that include beverages made from sources other than grapes within the term khamr in the language in which the Quran was revealed and with which the Companions were addressed render needless…"