Page 185 - Bigotry: The Dark Danger

Adnan Oktar
(Harun Yahya)

addresses "believers" in the verse, "You who have faith! Do not

approach the prayer when you are drunk, so that you will know
what you are saying…" (Qur'an, 4:43). It is clear that some among
these people had drunk alcohol and become intoxicated. These peo-
ple are people who pray. All this can clearly be seen from the verse.

Since a person needs to know what he is saying during the prayer,
be lucid and establish a profound bond with God, and since it is
impossible for a person to concentrate in that way if he is drunk, and
since he cannot be held responsible for what he says or does, God
forbids people to pray for so long as they are drunk. The term in the

verse "... so that you will know what you are saying," emphasizes
that someone will not know what he is doing while he is drunk and
will "not know what he is saying." Therefore we are given to under-
stand that a person should continue praying only once this state of
unawareness has passed.

Someone may claim to be abjuring the faith at a time when his
reason is clouded, such as in a state of intoxication, and may talk in

a totally illogical manner. What matters is what the person says and
does once reason has been restored. Moreover, a person may gen-
uinely have abjured the faith and may explicitly say as much. To use
that as a pretext for killing him is both fanaticism and a slander

against the Qur'an. The Qur'an curses that brutal mentality.
By making such a pronouncement about drunkenness in the

Qur'an, Almighty God is saying that doing something forbidden is
not an obstacle to a Muslim loving God and performing his religious
observances. This verse is also an indication of Islam's affectionate
and loving attitude to everyone. Yet the fanatical mindset that

desires death at every opportunity has manufactured its own false
commandments despite this explicit pronouncement in the Qur'an.

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