If you ask any smoker why he smokes, you would receive many different answers, such as

• "I smoke because it relieves depression"

• "I smoke because it eases the stress of my family problems".

• "I smoke when I'm out with my friends to have fun."

• "Smoking helps me forget my work-related worries and anger."

Some people smoke to imitate celebrities or other people they perceive as "glamorous" or "admirable" under the influence of advertisements, or perhaps they smoke because they have been watching people around them smoke and got into the habit themselves at a young age and cannot bring themselves to stop. You will even find those who say, “I smoke because it is good for health – it helps me concentrate and helps me keep my weight under control. Besides, I do not believe it is prohibited in Islam.”

If you are among those people who are not convinced that smoking is prohibited in Islam and that it has a very bad effect on one's health, you are invited to read on and think over the following points:

• Remember your true status: Before anything else, you are a slave of Allah The Almighty, which entails that you submit to Him alone. One of the implications of your servitude is that you must obey him, because your success lies in this. Once this is established, you must remember that smoking is one of the Khabaa’ith (any evil or harmful act): it wastes money, leads you to destruction and causes you to harm yourself and other Muslims. Do these things befit your status as a sincere believer and slave of Allah The Almighty?

• Smoking repels others: Have you observed how people stay away from you and avoid sitting next to you, or even greeting you because of the smell of cigarette smoke?

• Smoking causes impotency and infertility: Smoking might deprive you from having children because it weakens your sexual ability and it could lead a person to become sterile. If you do beget children, they might have genetic defects or disabilities.

• Harming your children through passive smoking: Everybody wishes the best for their children, but if you might harm them irreversibly by subjecting them to the harmful effects of smoking from a young age.

• Smoking prevents you from keeping ties with your parents and kin: This is because you would naturally avoid smoking around them. What good would be expected from a deed that deprives you from being around your relatives and eventually leads to severing ties with them?

• By smoking you support the economy of the enemies of our Muslim nation who fight us day and night.

• Smoking threatens your life, as millions of people die yearly due to smoking. Not only does smoking cause death, it also makes smokers suffer from debilitating conditions and diseases in the last few years of their lives.

• Smoking deprives you from true happiness; how would anyone rejoice while his life is full of sicknesses and always endangered?

• Smoking affects your mind, weakens your ability to think and decreases your concentration and attention span.

• Smoking makes you subject to strokes, heart attacks and sudden death.

• Smoking harms your eyes and causes many eye diseases, like infection of eyelid and eye nerves and could even lead to blindness.

• Smoking lowers your esteem in the eyes of people and weakens you determination.

• Smoking makes it difficult to perform acts of worship, instigates you to mix with evil people, and makes you avoid being around virtuous people.

• Smoking weakens your body and power.

• Smoking badly affects almost every part of your body.

• Smoking is one of the main causes of cancer.

• Smoking causes cavities in teeth, gum infections, makes the teeth dirty and changes their color, and leads to ulcers and sores on the tongue and the mouth.

• Smoking causes asthma, labored breathing, coughing, weakens the lungs, and leads to difficulty in digestion, strokes, chronic constipation and headaches and weakens the immunity system.

Isn’t this enough of a reminder for the one who has an attentive heart and takes heed? Most people would recognize the harmful effects of smoking and seek to give it up altogether – may Allah The Almighty make you among them!