Islam for Non-Muslims
- RELIGIOUS FAITHS VS IRRELIGIOUS IDEAS
- ISLAM AS A RELIGION
- ISLAM AS A WAY OF LIFE
Sinning of 3 W’s: Women, Wine and Wealth
36: SINNING OF THREE W’s: Women (Homosexuality), Wine & Wealth
Introduction: Islam provides a high moral ground in every aspect of life. In particular, at the social level, it aims to purify the society from three types of evils: (i) women related sins like adultery, rape, same gender sex; (ii) wine, alcohol or drug causing addiction and death; (iii) wealth related sins specially gambling that produces a generation of lazy, unproductive people. The negative consequences from these three types of sins related to women, wine and wealth (3 W’s) are now discussed below:
(A) Adultery: Adultery (sexual practices outside legally married opposite-sex partnership) has been more or less in existence since the dawn of human society. But the extent to which it is now prevailing in some free societies is both alarming as well as disturbing to our conscience. In such societies, adultery is not only openly and widely practiced by the commoners, but is also tolerated or even encouraged by the leading members of the society. There is hardly any law directed against adultery when chosen voluntarily by the participating partners. All these seem to impress that adultery is quite usual and there is nothing wrong with it. But in reality the opposite is true.
(1) Immoral: Historically, adultery has always been treated as a “shameful deed” that God commands us “not to come nearby to” (6:151). This notion was imprinted by divine inspiration even upon the minds of many early people who chose to cover their private organs by tree leaves which was basically an adultery preventive action. For example, the first couple (Adam and Eve) “sew together leaves for their covering” after “nakedness appeared to them” as penalty for their disloyalty (20:121). A man having sexual interest in other woman will not usually like his own mother or daughter to be sexually assaulted by other man or he cannot even think of marrying them personally. What keeps them away from such practices is in part their natural sense of adultery as immoral. Even in a society where adultery is a matter of large-scale social acceptance, there are yet certain traces of values which uphold adultery as immoral. Cases in point include gender-based segregation of toilet rooms, attacking political candidate's sexual background in election campaign, filing lawsuit against sexual abuse of the underage etc.
(2) Inhuman: Adultery is not only immoral, but also inhuman. It is for this reason, even in a sex-ridden society, legal measures are taken against forcible adultery (rape), though not against willful adultery which is more immoral than inhuman. Islam doubled down its prohibition against forcible adultery named rape by ordering “not to force (weaker people like) your maidservants to prostitution when they desire chastity” (24:33). Rape is not only a physical violence on women’s body but also upon their invaluable chastity and therefore their prestige takes a nose dive in a value-dominated society. Such violation of their human rights through rape sometimes extends to murder or fatal injury particularly when the victim tries to resist rape or her complaint is feared.
Voluntary adultery has also a sizable share in the causation of various social crimes including violence and murder, particularly when conflict arises between two partners or 2nd male partner gets involved. Keeping this in view, the Quran blames adultery as “a shameful (deed), and an evil, opening roads (to other evils)” (17:32). This is simply a reminder of God’s message “you shalt not commit adultery” as 6th item of 10 Commandments revealed to Moses about 3200 years ago for practices by his people.
(3) Social Problems: Adultery contributes to the following social problems:
(i) Teenage Pregnancy: In a system of coeducation, high percentage of teenage pregnancy resulting from adultery imposes upon student parents particularly the mother a premature burden of raising children. This poses a challenge for their good studentship and promising career.
(ii) Losing Marriage Benefits: Extramarital sex relationships dry up the interest of the partners in getting married. This deprives them of the benefits package from marriage. In particular, woman has more to lose from having consensual sex as her male partner or even any future candidate may decline to marry her on ground of impurity.
(iii) Parenthood Identity Problem: Women’s sex relations with multiple male partners (polyandry) pose a problem of deciding fatherhood of child. DNA test to resolve this problem is hugely expensive, if not prohibitive for the couple.
(iv) Lack of Proper Care: The children born of parents outside marriage are often deprived of necessary guardianship particularly from the father who often runs away. Brought up in a single parent or grandparent family setting, they tend to be disobedient and unruly, joining the ranks of criminal population.
(4) Health Problems:
(i) Sex Organs as Magnet for STDs: There appears to be a positive correlation between adultery and sexually transmitted diseases (STD). The genital organs that directly participate in sex crimes appear to be a magnet for a wide variety of painful STDs like syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia, trichomoniasis, genital herpes, H.I.V., pelvic infections causing infertility and many more.
(ii) AIDS: A relatively late addition (since 1981) to the above list of diseases is the killer AIDS which, as the most authoritative studies suggest, is predominantly linked with adultery and homosexuality as its HIV virus are transmitted through genital organs during intercourse with an AIDS patient. Therefore loud social voices cry out for sanctity (strict sexual relation with chaste wife) and abstinence (postponing sex pleasure until marriage) as effective preventives. Thus, the apparent close relation between sexual crimes and sex diseases gives us a reason to believe that God has a hand behind punishing the crime for violating His decree: "Don't commit adultery" (25:68).
(5) Economic Problems: Adultery often imposes on the unmarried/teenage couples an unbearable economic burden of unwanted children for which they are not ready yet. It also inflicts economic pains upon government in two ways: (i) when one or both parents are unable or unwilling to maintain their children, the state often takes over their financial burden at the expense of millions of dollars in tax payer’s money. (ii) Greater shock to the public sector economy perhaps comes from medical bills for treating adultery-related diseases which claim a big chunk from health budget. For example, the estimated average cost of providing full available lifetime medical treatment to an AIDS/HIV patient in the USA tends to approximate half a million dollars (as of 2022).
Homosexuality: Allied to adultery is homosexuality which means sex relations between partners of same gender: male-male or female-female. It tends to gain in popularity in many parts of the modern world. We now offer the following arguments based on “targeting the sin, not the sinner” which should impact your mind against this culture.
(i) Unified Stand of Holy Books: All monotheistic scriptures authored by the same God are united in rejection of homosexuality. For example, the Quran condemned this practice as "abomination" and "transgression beyond limits" and provides for tough punishment in the court "if two men among you are found guilty of lewdness" (21:74; 7:81; 4:16). This is additional to the tougher punishment that is awaiting them in the Afterlife. By comparison, both homosexuality and adultery are shameless sins but the former is apparently worse for going out of the nature by mating with the same sexes. That is why, Prophet Lot offered his “daughters” for marriage to his homosexual people to shift them away from homosexual habit (11:78).
(ii) Magnet for Natural Calamities: Historically, homosexuality was widely prevalent during time of Prophet Lot when his people “had been long in the habit of practicing this abomination” (11:78). God therefore destroyed his people for this sin by sending down devastating "shower (of brimstone)" (7:80; 27:58). This ugly habit is most likely to invite similar natural punishments anytime in the present or future, if (a) homosexuals continue to grow in influence (e.g. increase in their number and approval for same sex marriage etc.) and (b) the remainder of the society chooses to be passive tolerant of the growing tide of homosexual movement.
(iii) Against Natural Order: Homosexuality goes against natural order of God when you choose your own gender as sexual partner. God "created (females) for you (males) to be your mates" (26:166). Accordingly, He designed the physical and mental features of opposite genders in a mutually attractive fashion. To be specific, genital organs for males and females are naturally designed in a complementary fashion with prospect for greater sexual pleasures in the case of heterosexual union rather than homosexual partnership.
(iv) Unproven Theory of Same Sex Attraction: The homosexuals often attribute their sexual orientation to the type of their natural body chemistry. They however cannot produce any divine documents to prove that God fashioned their body with more attraction toward their same sex than the opposite sex. In reality, we see things differently in the form of stronger attraction between males and females. Riding on their unsubstantiated culture, the homosexuals often go to the extent of sexually abusing innocent children (e.g. priests victimizing boys). Their obsession with unrealistic imagination can be seen in the fact that they often assign dramatic role of husband to one and wife to the other even if both of them belong to the same gender; male or female. In fact, they talk about same sex attraction because they think about that in their own perverted way. God expects you to overcome your instinct for same sex attraction the same way He wants you to control your instinct to commit adultery with the opposite sex.
(v) Unproductive & Depopulation Risk: Same gender can never produce even a single child without taking help (egg or sperm) from the opposite sex. Therefore they turn to adoption of children produced by opposite sex partners for filling their emotional vacuum, although in imperfect and incomplete manner. Also there is no guarantee that such adopted children will not be victims of abuses by such foster parents. Anyway, it is a sheer common sense that if currently everyone becomes homosexuals, the world will eventually have ‘0’ population following the death of the present generation.
(vi) Decline of Beneficial Marriage: Homosexual culture has been posing a grave challenge to historic institution of traditional heterosexual marriage. With surge of homosexuality, such marriage is likely to decline with the likelihood that the endless merits of family life (like real love, emotion, trust, legal protection, lasting relationship) will be off-limit to homosexual partnership.
(vii) Links with AIDS/HIV: Homosexuality remains in the background of many complex diseases including HIV/AIDS, monkey pox, hepatitis, STD etc. This means if you keep clean of homosexuality, you can live healthy and longer.
(B) Addiction: Islam prohibits all forms of addiction: alcohol or drug because of their numerous harmful consequences. There is a “great sin and some profit for men, but the sin is greater than the profit", as the Quran talks of alcohol, labeling it as “abomination” (2:219; 5:90). Parallel to the Quran, alcohol was banned in the Bible as well.
(1) Alcohol: Alcoholics spend valuable money on substances like wine, beer, whisky etc. These may bring them some immediate personal benefits especially in pleasure of mind when consumed in small quantity and high quality. But when drinking as a habit reinforces itself, then you will be forced to drink in higher quantity and then unfortunately you have to use lower quality alcohol due to money constraint. It is only then the real problem sets in.
(i) Social problems: Alcohol deprives the addicts of good senses and sound judgment power that is needed to distinguish between right and wrong and make a sensible decision. As a result, you will be drawn into social problems like road accidents, depression and anxiety, domestic violence, using force to obtain alcohol money, confusing mother with wife, job absenteeism, rape etc., to mention a few from the long list of alcohol-related problems. Of particular concern about alcoholism is its contribution to tens of thousands of accidental deaths worldwide that links to impaired judgment while driving under influence of alcohol. The Quran identifies the major problems from intoxication as “exciting enmity and hatred between you” and hindering you from His “remembrance and prayer” (5:91).
(ii) Health problems: Alcohol may affect your health in numerous ways as below:
Nerve: The presence of a poisonous Ethanol in alcohol can damage your nervous system, causing a variety of nerve diseases, leading to coma and death.
Brain: Alcohol can harm your brain cells and thereby it can affect everything the brain does for you. For example, you may not be able to think cognitively or memorize or remember as usual. Improper brain functions also can cause blurred vision, slurred speech, slow tumbling movement, aggressive behavior etc.
Liver: Drinking creates scar or inflammation in liver and contributes to deadly hepatitis, cirrhosis, cancer etc.
Other Organs: Alcohol can also badly affect other vital organs like heart, kidney, lung, pancreas etc., by causing cancer to these organs or disabling their functionality.
Birth Defects: Drinking by pregnant women leads to their births of physically deformed or mentally retarded babies who become a burden for the parents and society.
(2) Intoxicating Drugs: Islamic prohibition for alcohol extends to harmful drugs for good reasons even though the latter is a modern day problem. Compared to alcohol, drugs like fentanyl, heroin, cocaine etc. usually appear to be more problematic for their worse effects particularly through mental depression and suicidal death in the worst case. Islam labels it sinful if you anyway, regardless of substance (a) kill yourself or inflict harm to your body and/or (b) get intoxicated or addicted that hampers normal functioning of your body and mind, leading to your failure in religious and social obligations.
The users usually begin using drugs with a vain attempt to escape mental agonies under cover of addiction. Soon they are increasingly drawn into this habit only to find themselves in a world of addiction from where they find it very hard to return. Soon they retire from active social and economic life except for disturbing social peace to obtain drug money by force. Far worse is their suffering from drug-related ailments which affect brain, liver and other vital organs etc. Needle exchange by drug users is often considered a major cause of AIDS which eventually guide them to death. In this way, drugs leave paralytic effects upon the society, causing virtually a net deduction from active labor force. For all these, drug is now one of the most terrible global problems.
(C) Gambling: Gambling is the betting of money or something of value on an event with an uncertain outcome with the primary intent to win money. Some early examples of gambling include “(dedication of) stones, and (divination by) arrows” (5:90) which now extends to enormous variety like slot machines, video poker, dice games, card games, racetrack betting on horses, playing by lottery and so on. It is an addictive game to the gamblers and a source of unearned income to the winners. Islam condemns gambling as an “abomination” (5:90), by claiming that like alcohol it contains “great sin and some profit for men (as well) but the sin is greater than profit” (2:219).
(1) Production problem: Gambling creates a group of greedy idlers who hunt for easy money turning their back on productive activities. If, in this way, a majority of a nation’s money and manpower are sunk in gambling practices, then there may not have enough of these resources available for investment in production of essential goods and services. This may result in shortage of supplies needed for meeting your basic needs.
(2) Distribution problem: Gambling very often means a transfer of money from the poor losers to the rich winners, leading to inefficient redistribution of wealth in the society. Usually under illusion of winning and making up losses, the losers keep on gambling only to lose more money to the winners. This process tends to break the economic backbone of the losers and bring hard reality for their family.
(3) Social Problems: Gambling also causes varied social problems. Examples include coercive method used for extorting money for gambling, cruel negligence toward family etc. This is rightly stated in the Quran as a cause of “enmity and hatred” among people, particularly due to Satanic pull of your mind from “remembrance of God and praying” (5:91). It also can cause mental problems like frustration, anxiety, depression etc. particularly for the losers who then may turn to toxic solution through addictive drugs, opening new fronts for more dangerous problems.
Conclusion: Apparently, the social and personal costs of adultery, addiction and gambling can never be overstated and therefore you need to turn back on them.