Quora Answer: What Do Modern Muslims Think of Islamic Wine Poetry?

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ 

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “What do modern day Muslims think of Islamic wine poetry?  Many of the most influential poets, especially in the Persian tradition, such as Shaykh Abu Nuwas al-Hasan ibn Hani ‘Abd al-Awwal asw-Swabaḥ al-Hakami (q.s.), and Khwaja Shams ad-Din Muhammad Hafizh ash-Shirazi (q.s.), wrote wine poems.  How is this reconciled with the prohibition of alcohol in modern Islam?” 

The wine and intoxication in Sufi poetry are metaphors.  These poems are full of literary devices, and are not referring to actual wine and intoxication.  This is what happens when people read great works of literature, especially translations, without understanding the nuances of language.  Drinking the wine of love, for example, refers to the opening of spiritual states, and recognising the Divine.  This intoxication refers to the intoxication of extreme love of Allah (s.w.t.).  The term used to describe such a love is “ishq”, and the one thus intoxicated to madness is a “majdzub”.  When they speak of poverty, it refers to two kinds: the spiritual poverty of the disbeliever; and the poverty of the one who recognises that an Absolute Allah (s.w.t.) is the Creator, and thus, Owner of everything.  None of the poets, some of our greatest scholars of Islam, in their own right, drank worldly wine.