I can still picture myself looking at God’s Messenger when a man who had drunk wine was brought before him and he told the people to beat him. Some struck him with sandals, some with sticks and some with mitakhas. Ibn Wahb said this means green palm fronds. Then God’s Messenger took some dust from the ground and threw it in his face.
Jabir reported the Prophet as saying, “Beat anyone who drinks wine, and if he does it a fourth time kill him.” He said that after that a man who had drunk wine four times was brought to the Prophet and he beat him, but did not kill him.
Tirmidhi transmitted it, and Abu Dawud transmitted it on the authority of Qablsa b. Dhu’aib. Another version by both of them and by Nasa’i, Ibn Majah and Darimi on the authority of some of the companions of God’s Messenger, including Ibn ‘Umar, Mu'awiya, Abu Huraira and ash-Sharid, stops at “kill him.”*
* This means that they gave only the Prophet’s words, and did not say anything about the man who was not killed.
When a man who had drunk wine was brought to God’s Messenger he told us to beat him, and some struck him with their hands, some with their garments and some with their sandals. He then told them to reproach him, and they faced him and said, “You have not respected God, you have not feared God, and you have not shown shame before God’s Messenger.” But when some of the people said, “God put you to shame!” he told them not to say that and help the devil to get power over him, but to say, “O God, forgive him. O God show mercy to him.”
When a drinker was brought in the time of God’s Messenger, during Abu Bakr’s Caliphate and in the beginning of ‘Umar’s Caliphate, we beat him with our hands, sandals and cloaks, but at the end of ‘Umar’s Caliphate he inflicted forty stripes, and when people were immoderate and excessively wicked he inflicted eighty stripes.
