The Islamic dispute over smoking began in the 17th century with tobacco in general and by the 21st century had narrowed to hookah specifically.

Why tobacco became a problem for Muslim jurists

Tobacco arrived in the Ottoman Empire in the late 16th century, brought east along the trade routes covered in the article "How Tobacco Reached the East." Doctors first prescribed it as a medicine, but by the 1600s recreational smoking had spread so widely that it drew resistance from the ulema. The problem was not novelty as such but silence in the sources: neither the Quran, nor the hadith, nor the works of earlier jurists said anything about a substance that did not exist when they were composed. Tobacco's status had to be derived by analogy (qiyas) with categories the law already recognized.

Which concepts of fiqh the two sides argued with

Opponents of smoking advanced four lines of argument: comparison to wine (novice smokers grew dizzy and became excessively cheerful — signs resembling intoxication); harm to health and the substance's sheer "repulsiveness"; classification of tobacco as bid'ah, an impermissible innovation that bred idleness and extravagance; and, less legal but prominent in the rhetoric, tobacco's foreign, "European" origin as a threat to Islamic purity. Supporters of permissibility answered each point in turn: a novice's dizziness is not intoxication in the sharia sense, medical accusations come from unqualified people, and an innovation can be "customary" rather than "religious" and so does not fall under the ban on bid'ah. The dispute never produced a single verdict — tobacco ended up split across three categories of fiqh: haram (forbidden), makruh (discouraged but not forbidden), and mubah (permitted, neutral).

Which scholars argued which side, and what exactly they wrote

Among the opponents, the Egyptian theologian Ibrahim al-Laqani (d. 1631 or 1632) stands out: he saw tobacco as "a kind of Christian plot against Islam." The Damascus jurist Najm al-Din al-Ghazzi (d. 1651) called coffeehouses (the venues from which the hookah lounge later grew as a separate format — see "The History of the Hookah Lounge") "a refuge of Satan," rejecting coffee and tobacco alike as intoxicants. The Palestinian jurist Mar'i al-Karmi (d. 1623 or 1624) was more cautious: he found tobacco repulsive but found no legal grounds for a ban, and considered it "better than opium and hashish."

The weightiest text in favor of permissibility was a treatise by the Damascus Sufi jurist Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulsi (1641–1731), "Reconciliation Between the Brethren Concerning the Ruling on the Permissibility of Tobacco" (1682, published in Damascus in 1924). Al-Nabulsi addressed the accusations point by point: medical claims come from unqualified people, novices' dizziness is not intoxication, the innovation itself is "customary" rather than "religious," and he called the intolerance of smoking's opponents personal "fanaticism." In the same treatise he wrote: "Tobacco has now become extremely well known in all the lands of Islam… People of every class use it… I have even seen five-year-old children being introduced to it."

A different, political rather than theological logic was offered by the preacher Kadızade Mehmed Efendi (1582–1635), leader of the puritanical Kadızadeli movement: while acknowledging that the Quran does not explicitly forbid tobacco and coffee, he insisted that "a ruler's ban is sufficient."

Was Murad IV's 1633 ban religious or political

In 1633, Sultan Murad IV shut down Istanbul's coffeehouses and taverns and introduced the death penalty for smoking tobacco and opium in public, personally overseeing executions on the spot (covered in more detail in "The History of Smoking Bans: From Murad IV to Modern Laws"). The ban also had practical triggers: the janissary revolt of January 1632 and a fire in the Cibali quarter in 1633 — wooden Istanbul often burned because of careless nighttime smoking. Soldiers kept smoking secretly in latrines and hiding pipes in their sleeves anyway; the ban lasted roughly until 1650.

Whether it was primarily a religious act or a political decision is disputed. The historian James Grehan (American Historical Review, 2006) sees an intertwining of motives: the Kadızadelis condemned tobacco religiously, and Murad IV drew on that discourse, yet Kadızade Mehmed himself grounded the ban not in haram but in "the sufficiency of a ruler's ban" — plus there were direct practical triggers as well. The Turkish legal historian Ekrem Buğra Ekinci takes a more clear-cut position: the tobacco question "was not primarily religious, but political and social" — coffeehouses served as venues for political talk, which was not tolerated in an unstable era.

How the ulema's position shifted from executions to a "sin tax"

Earlier in the century, Şeyhülislam Bahâ'î Mehmed Efendi (in office 1649–1651 and 1652–1654) ruled tobacco permissible, effectively ending the early-century crackdowns. Separately, by the end of the 17th century the tone of official theology had shifted toward tolerance: jurists asked whether tobacco deserved such attention when bribery and corruption harmed society far more. By 1691 the treasury was depleted by defeats on the Austrian frontier, and instead of a ban a "sin tax" was introduced — fiscal expediency won out over the religious prohibition.

Later attempts to revive bans followed, but without success: the authorities of Mecca and Cairo briefly reintroduced restrictions in 1743, and an edict by the Damascus governor Asad Pasha al-Azm in 1749 was hastily withdrawn in the face of popular resistance. The exception was 1806, when, after taking Mecca, the Wahhabi movement successfully banned smoking, burning pipes on bonfires — a ban that held until 1812, when Egyptian troops reversed it. The sources do not detail any difference between the legal schools (madhhabs).

What contemporary fatwas say about hookah

The dispute did not close in the 18th century — it continues, only the older arguments about self-harm and intoxication have been joined by proven medical harm.

On September 5, 1999, Egypt's Grand Mufti Nasr Farid Wasel issued a fatwa against tobacco smoking; the sources do not specify which category — makruh or haram — he assigned it to.

On July 17, 2013, the Special Fatwa Committee (Muzakarah) of Malaysia's National Council for Islamic Religious Affairs ruled that smoking hookah (shisha) is haram, including tobacco-free "shisha sticks." The reasoning cites the Quranic prohibition on self-harm, the hadith "there should be neither harm nor reciprocating harm," and the principle of sadd al-dhari'ah (blocking the very path to harm) — plus WHO data: 142 chemicals in hookah smoke, a smoke volume per session 100–200 times that of a cigarette, and 1.7 times more nicotine.

Saudi Arabia's Permanent Committee for Scholarly Research and Ifta, headed at the time by Sheikh Abd al-Aziz ibn Baz, in fatwa No. 14777 called hookah haram as a "repugnant habit," citing Quranic verses 5:4 and 7:157 on the permissibility of only "good" things, and a WHO report — up to 100–200 cigarettes per hour-long session.

A fatwa on the IslamQA website (Sheikh Muhammad al-Munajjid, citing Saudi Arabia's Permanent Committee) dated February 7, 2011, is the first to explicitly introduce the hygiene argument — essentially the same logic of "self-harm," but applied not to the substance but to the method of use: hookah often passes around a circle of smokers through a single mouthpiece (a subject covered separately in "Hookah Etiquette: What's Customary and Why"), and this, according to the fatwa's text, increases the transmission of infectious diseases, including tuberculosis; a session is equated to "at least ten cigarettes," and tobacco is said to contain "no fewer than four thousand toxic substances."

The Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America (AMJA), fatwa No. 3020 of August 6, 2007 (author: Dr. Hatem al-Haj), likewise classified hookah and any tobacco use as haram — on the principle of "no harm and no reciprocating harm" and the argument about extravagance (Quran 17:27: "Squanderers are brothers of the devils"); the shared mouthpiece is not mentioned there.

What widely repeated claims about hookah and Islam are unconfirmed

The common formula "the 2000 Al-Azhar fatwa" banning hookah appears in secondhand retellings, but a separate primary source — a document specifically from Dar al-Ifta or Al-Azhar as an institution — could not be found; everywhere there are only references to intermediaries. A detailed picture of differences among the madhhabs as separate school rulings of the 17th–18th centuries is not confirmed by the sources. The full text of the Saudi fatwa No. 14777 proved inaccessible — a secondhand account was used instead. And the claim that Murad IV's ban was the first state ban on tobacco in world history to carry the death penalty does not appear in the academic sources.

In brief

Is hookah haram or makruh in Islam? There is no single view: since the 17th century jurists have classified smoking as haram, makruh, or mubah at different times; contemporary fatwas from Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, and AMJA call hookah haram.

Why did tobacco become a subject of dispute in Islamic law at all? It appeared at the turn of the 16th–17th centuries and is not mentioned in the Quran or hadith — its status had to be derived through analogy (qiyas) with already-known categories: intoxication, self-harm, impermissible innovation.

Was Murad IV's 1633 ban religious? Historians disagree: James Grehan sees an intertwining of religious and political motives, while Ekrem Buğra Ekinci considers the question primarily political and social.

What are contemporary fatwas against hookah based on? On the impermissibility of self-harm, proven medical harm (WHO data), and, in the IslamQA fatwa, on hygiene — the risk of infections through a shared mouthpiece.