A fifth of the world’s population is Muslim, and most Muslims live in areas where the prevalence of smoking is high and increasing by the day. According to statistics, it is estimated that out of the five million people who die due to smoking related causes every year, one million are Muslims. Yet, thanks to media influences and advertising, which erroneously portray smoking as part of a glamorous lifestyle, many Muslims — both men and women — are prompted to take to the habit themselves.
In response to the growing trend, health and religious authorities across the world have launched anti-smoking drives, to deter people and raise awareness of the harmful effects of smoking. Besides the mandatory health warning on cigarette packets, it has been proposed that the pack should carry graphic images of the diseases that can be contracted by smoking, to drive the point home to smokers.
In another official initiative, many cities and public places around the world have designated areas as ‘non-smoking’, to make it difficult for people to light up. Recently the holy cities of Makkah and Madeenah have been declared no-smoking zones, and smoking or even selling cigarettes has been made a punishable offence there.
Similarly, mosques and religious leaders across the world have taken it upon themselves to educate people about the harmful effects of smoking, which is considered a prohibited act in Islam. The Quran says (what means):
• {…make not your own hands contribute to your destruction} [Quran 2: 195]
• {…nor kill or destroy yourselves} [Quran 4:29].
Every Ramadan, there are wide-ranging campaigns run in Muslim communities in the West and the Middle East, in order to highlight the problem and its consequences. Anti-smoking messages are the subject of many religious discourses and Friday khutbahs. Yet, according to the World Health Organization, which has been studying smoking trends and statistical patterns across the globe, the trend to take up smoking shows no signs of abating. Most smokers begin early in life, before they are 25 years old and the majority of smokers in affluent countries begin in their teens, with a decline in the age of starting smoking observed worldwide.
Where all these initiatives come from external sources, which may not have much of an immediate impact on a person, there is something closer home that is often overlooked in the campaign against smoking that can have a positive influence on a smoker. A Muslim woman can do a lot in her capacity as a wife, mother, sister and daughter to discourage smoking in her loved ones, or help them quit the habit.
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