The Hadd of Khamr

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ 

Ustadz William Voller wrote that scholars award a hadd, fixed penalty, to a sane adult Muslim witnessed drinking khamr by two upright people, and he has the smell still on him or is inebriated.  There is consensus on this due to the narration, “If a person drinks khamr, subject him to stripes; if he repeats it, subject him to stripes.” 

Most jurists set the punishment at eighty strikes although Imam Abu ‘Abdullah Muhammad ibn Idris ash-Shafi’i (r.a.) stated forty owing to how a hadits from Sayyidina Abu Sa’id Sa’id ibn Malik al-Khazraji al-Khudri (r.a.) could be understood: “The Messenger of Allah (s.a.w.) awarded forty strikes with two shoes.”  The Hanafi school differs in only applying the uppermost hadd penalty for wine from dates or grapes, other intoxicants are punished only for inebriation.  Inebriation is described as someone whom under the influence “does not understand speech, whether less or more, and he cannot distinguish between a man or a woman,” as stated by Imam Burhan ad-Din Abu al-Hasan ‘Ali ibn Abu Bakr al-Farghani al-Marghinani (r.a.), in al-Hidayah. 

There are a number of ahadits that prohibit sitting with people who are drinking: “He who believes in Allah (s.w.t.) and the Last Day must not sit at a cloth,” meaning a table or gathering, “where wine is being circulated,” as reported by Imam Abu ‘Isa Muhammad ibn ‘Isa as-Sulami at-Tirmidzi (r.a.).  This is understood to be a prohibition of means rather than objectives, that is, sitting with those who drink is not a sin in of itself, but it is feared it will lead to sin.  Generally, it is considered makruh, disliked, such that there is no blame if one has a hajat, need, but sinful if it becomes habitual.