Dr Mohammed Naushad, BME Stop Smoking support worker, Preston PCT, discusses the negative impact of smoking on your wellbeing.

What do the ‘evils’ of tobacco, used in the form of cigarettes, cigars, pipes, bidis, chew (paan, gutkha), hookah, etc, do to your health and deen?

Danger to your health: Tobacco kills! An estimated 120,000 people die every year in Britain from smoke related diseases. It contains a powerful addictive drug, nicotine, similar to cocaine and heroin. Contains many permitted additives like ethyl alcohol, spirits like whisky, brandy, rum etc. About 4000 people are diagnosed to have ‘mouth cancer’ from chewing tobacco every year in UK.

Danger to your family’s health: Those around the smoker inhale what is known as ‘second-hand smoke’ - this is the unfiltered, poisonous waste that goes into the air surrounding the smoker. There are over 4,000 chemicals in cigarette smoke, over 40 of which are known to cause cancer. Second-hand smoke causes or aggravates asthma, bronchitis, and other respiratory problems, especially in children.

Waste of money: Like health, wealth too is a trust from Allah. A twenty-a-day smoker spends about £2000 every year, which literally goes up in smoke!

Noxious smell: Muslims are advised to refrain from eating raw onions and garlic - simply as a courtesy to those around them. Nobody likes the smell. The same goes, even more so, for the reek of cigarettes, which permeates everything around the smoker - hair, clothing, home, car, etc.

Harm to environment/property: Smoking is the second biggest cause of home fires in the UK. Every day, UK smokers throw about 200 million cigarette butts and 20 million packets, all ending up on earth as waste! It is estimated that food crops grown instead of tobacco plantation, could feed as many as 10-20 million people!

A stain on the community: Allah regards Muslims as the best of nations evolved for mankind, who enjoins good and forbids wrong and believes in Allah (3:110).

Smoking or any form of tobacco use has a corruptive social impact and sets a bad example to the whole of humanity, especially to the children, youth and non-Muslims. Does Islam not have a solution to this problem of this century? Let’s play our own role to wake up to a smoke free world this Ramadan, for Allah’s sake, forever.

“Health, in Islam, is viewed as one of the greatest blessings. It is an ‘Amaana’ (Trust) that Allah has bestowed on mankind and we have to account for it. It is indeed a favour taken for granted.”