‘I felt like I was living my last day on Earth’


Is it halal or haram?

When kicking the habit is not that easy

How it affects your health

Ahmed Said, 47, woke up one morning with excruciating chest pain. It gnawed at his lungs and made his forehead sweat profusely. It also left a distinct tingling in the fingers of his left arm. The father of four knew exactly why he was having a heart attack: Said was a heavy smoker who started the habit at 16. This was the moment of reckoning.
“I told my brother who was with me at the time to take good care of my children in case I passed,” Said recalled. “I felt I was living my last day on earth.”
Frank Aceves, 48, a convert to Islam and a father of five, knew that smoking was going to kill him if he did not take action and put an end to his nicotine dependence. The Corona resident picked up the habit when he was just 18. “I smoked a pack and a half every day,” Aceves said. “I had started college then and the stress pushed me to light up.” 
Both Said and Aceves knew that smoking was very harmful to their health, but neither could resist the lure of the powerful addiction.
“There is not a single organ in the body that is not affected by the negative effects of smoking,” said Dr. Maher Hathout, a retired cardiologist and the director of the Islamic Center of Southern California. “People don’t know that one whiff of smoke causes constriction of the coronary vessels that carry blood to the heart.”
Hathout added that the smoker is in constant risk of a heart attack, especially if his coronary vessels are not healthy to begin with. “When we talk about prevention, complete abstinence from smoking comes at the top of the list,” the doctor said.
Many experts agree with Hathout, namely that smoking causes major health problems and is often linked to many serious ailments that include cancer of the lips, tongue, salivary glands, mouth, larynx, esophagus, middle and lower pharynx, and the bladder. Smoking is also linked to cancers of the renal pelvis, uterine cervix and pancreas. All of these cancers are irreversible, and the smoker is almost certain to die a long, painful death. 
Experts also agree that a person who smokes one pack of cigarettes per day for one year is as if he/she smeared one cup of tar on his/her lungs. Tobacco smoke contains 4,000 different chemicals, some of which are carbon monoxide, ammonia, hydrogen cyanide and lead. These substances combined can seriously damage the body and can even be fatal. The tar from the cigarettes slowly clogs up the alveoli in the lungs. Alveoli are the areas where oxygen is defused into the blood stream. The more alveoli that are clogged the harder it is for oxygen to circulate to the body often leading to wheezing and shortness of breath.
Said can attest to some of these symptoms. “I always feel dizzy each time I climb a flight of stairs,” he said. “And I tend to cough quite a bit and feel acute burning in my lungs.”
Aceves said that although he did not cough much, he did experience excess phlegm and sometimes shortness of breath. “I had absolutely no doubt that smoking was harmful to my body. I knew I had to quit someday,” he added.  But that someday is on the mind of many smokers who lack the willpower to carry their intentions through.
“I don’t believe in gradual reduction of smoking; I never saw it work,” Hathout said. “I believe in the cold turkey approach. If I stop I stop, if I fail then I try again,” he added. The doctor also said statistics show that if a person can stop smoking for one week, he would be able to stop permanently.
But this theory did not work for Said, who tried quitting many times. The latest attempt was after his mild heart attack. “When I was lying in that hospital bed and my family was standing around me crying, I swore to myself I would quit,” he said. However, Said’s attempt at quitting lasted only a few weeks. Soon after he was rehabilitated, he started smoking cigars and then eventually went back to cigarettes.
Experts cite peer pressure and environmental influences as leading causes of most smoking relapses. Smokers who quit and then hang around friends or relatives who light up are very likely to experience relapse.
 In Said’s case, it was a business partner who played a role in his relapse. “Each time we got together, we had coffee, and coffee usually comes with cigarettes,” Said recalled. “Temptation was simply too overwhelming for me,” he added. Harmful effects of smoking are not limited to just smokers but to non-smokers as well. Experts assert that secondhand smoke is just as bad, if not worse. They say some at the end of a burning cigarette is more harmful to the non-smoker than the smoke inhaled by the smoker because the particles are smaller and can go deeper into the lung and can be more damaging.  The non-smoker can develop the same health complications as the smoker.
Moreover, the news is even worse for teens. Studies have shown that smoking among teens causes retardation in the development of lungs, which will never fully attain normal development and function. This may cause an earlier decline in lung function, creating a deceased lung reserve, which may leave them unable to walk or run for extended periods of time.

Halal or Haram?

Arguing whether smoking is halal (lawful) or haram (unlawful or forbidden) has been a contentious issue among Islamic scholars. Some argue very strongly that it is haram, while others prefer a less damning word called makrouh, or discouraged.
“There is no direct text that addresses the issue of smoking, there are only general principles,” said Sheikh Yasser Fazaga, imam and community leader at the Mission Viejo mosque. “That which is tayib (good) is lawful and that which is khabeeth (evil) is unlawful,” he added. Acknowledging that smoking was classified as being evil, Fazaga disagreed with those who declare smoking haram, arguing that there was no clear text forbidding it as the Qur’an says, “And He (God) detailed to you that which He has made unlawful.” 
However, many scholars disagree, Making the case that mixed views on smoking are due to the fact that cigarettes did not exist at the time when the Qur’an was revealed in the 7th century A.D., these scholars are of the opinion that the nicotine habit is undeniably haram. In a decree issued by the Permanent Committee of Academic Research and Fatwa in Saudi Arabia, the statement was unanimous. “In view of the harm caused by tobacco, growing, trading in and smoking of tobacco are judged to be haram (forbidden). The Prophet (PBUH) is reported to have said, ‘Do not harm yourselves or others.’  Furthermore, tobacco is toxic, and God says in the Qur’an that the Prophet, (PBUH), ‘enjoins upon them that which is good and pure, and forbids them that which is harmful.’” 
Supporters of this fatwa cite many verses from the Qur’an to corroborate their argument about the unlawfulness of smoking:
“Be not cast by your own hands to ruin” (1:195).
“...He (the Prophet) commands them what is just, and forbids them what is evil; he allows them as lawful what is good, and prohibits them from what is bad” (7:157). 
“And do not kill yourselves” (4:29).
They also quote Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) to have said, “Whomsoever drinks poison, thereby killing himself, will sip this poison forever in the Hell-Fire.”
There seems to be a general consensus among Islamic scholars across the Arab world that supports the fatwa of Saudi scholars. Smoking in the Arab world, where there is little or no anti-smoking education and awareness, has reached epidemic proportions, and there is no data or statistics on smoking-related illnesses and deaths.
While driving home one night with his 14-year old daughter, and as he was getting ready to light another cigarette, Aceves was moved by the teenager’s tears. She begged him to quit. It was a moving incident that eventually motivated Aceves to kick the habit a year and a half later. “I basically woke up one day and decided to stop smoking, pure and simple,” Aceves said. “I couldn’t live another day thinking that smoking could separate me from my children,” he added.
What helped Aceves stay smoke-free is the fact that he was an avid athlete. He exercised five evenings a week by practicing martial arts and boxing. “Practicing sports helped a lot,” Aceves said. “But quitting was still the toughest thing I had to do in my life.”
Said remains a smoker and does not plan to quit anytime soon. Even when threatened by cardiovascular disease and a possible second heart attack that might end his life, he is sill intent on continuing smoking.
To the likes of Said, Hathout has a valuable piece of advice. “Put your hand in your pocket and throw that pack in the garbage,” he said. “Pledge to yourself and to Allah that you will not cause any damage to your body again.”