Is smoking or vaping haram?

Is smoking haram? The Quran and the hadith say nothing about tobacco, which reached the Muslim world from the Americas around 1600, a thousand years after the revelation. Muslim scholars have therefore reasoned about it from the Quran’s principles, and their answer has changed as knowledge of tobacco has grown. The stronger view (al-rājiḥ) today is that smoking is at least makruh (disliked) and becomes haram where it damages health, because Allah forbids us to throw ourselves into ruin. Vaping is a lesser harm that still deserves caution. Quitting is a good deed that Allah loves, and a smoker deserves encouragement, never contempt.

What did the classical scholars say about tobacco?

Tobacco caused one of the great legal debates of the Ottoman centuries. In Morocco, scholars consulted by the sultan in 1602 declared it forbidden. In Istanbul, Sultan Murad IV (r. 1623–1640) banned tobacco and coffeehouses and punished smokers with death, yet smoking spread anyway.

Many scholars took the opposite view. The Ottoman polymath Kâtip Çelebi, in The Balance of Truth (Mīzān al-Ḥaqq, 1656), argued that tobacco should be treated as permissible, since things are lawful by default (al-aṣl fī al-ashyāʾ al-ibāḥa) and condemning a habit practiced by so many would only multiply sin. The Ottoman chief mufti Bahāʾī Efendi issued a fatwa permitting it. In Damascus the Hanafi scholar and Sufi ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Nābulusī (d. 1731) wrote al-Ṣulḥ bayn al-Ikhwān fī Ḥukm Ibāḥat al-Dukhān, “Making Peace Between Brothers on the Permissibility of Smoking” (1682), rejecting the analogy between tobacco and wine.

Their reasoning was sound for its time. They judged tobacco a fragrant plant that did not intoxicate, and nobody yet knew it caused cancer and heart disease. Coffee had passed through a similar suspicion a century earlier and is now enjoyed across the Muslim world (Can Muslims drink coffee?).

Why do many scholars today say smoking is haram?

Rulings follow their causes, and the cause has changed. Modern medicine has shown that tobacco kills a large share of those who use it for many years. The Quran commands:

وَلَا تُلۡقُواْ بِأَيۡدِيكُمۡ إِلَى ٱلتَّهۡلُكَةِ وَأَحۡسِنُوٓاْۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ يُحِبُّ ٱلۡمُحۡسِنِينَ

“Do not throw yourselves into ruin with your own hands, and do good: Allah loves those who do good.”

Quran 2:195

The Quran also describes the Prophet ﷺ as the one who:

وَيُحِلُّ لَهُمُ ٱلطَّيِّبَٰتِ وَيُحَرِّمُ عَلَيۡهِمُ ٱلۡخَبَـٰٓئِثَ

“Makes good things lawful for them and forbids them what is foul.”

Quran 7:157

It also says, “Do not kill yourselves; Allah is merciful to you” (4:29). The Prophet ﷺ gave the principle that governs all of this:

«لاَ ضَرَرَ وَلاَ ضِرَارَ»

“There is to be no harm, and no harming.”

Sunan Ibn Majah 2341

Al-Albani graded this hadith sahih, and the jurists built a whole chapter of law on it. Protecting life and health is one of the objectives of the sharia (What is sharia?).

On this basis, Malaysia’s National Fatwa Council declared smoking haram in 1996, Egypt’s Grand Mufti Nasr Farid Wasil did so in 2000, and the Indonesian movement Muhammadiyah did so in 2010. The Indonesian Ulema Council took a middle position in 2009: smoking is makruh in general and haram in public places and around pregnant women. Ayatollah Sistani holds that smoking becomes haram when it proves seriously harmful to one’s health.

So is smoking haram or makruh?

The scholars differ (ikhtilāf), and the differences are smaller than they look. Everyone agrees on these points:

• Starting to smoke is to be avoided. No one should take up a habit that will harm them and enslave them to a craving.
• Harming others is haram. Smoking around children, pregnant women, the sick, or anyone who has not chosen it adds harm to others to harm to self.
• Heavy smoking that is damaging your health crosses into the forbidden. The rulings of prohibition rest mainly on this case.
• Wasting money is blameworthy. The Quran praises those who are neither wasteful nor stingy (25:67), and a pack-a-day habit costs a family dearly.

A person who smokes occasionally, or who is trying to quit, is facing a disliked habit and a struggle with addiction. They are not outside the community of faith, and nobody should shame them at the mosque door.

Is vaping haram?

Electronic cigarettes deliver nicotine without burning tobacco. Health authorities such as the UK’s National Health Service judge them far less harmful than smoking, while warning that they are addictive and their long-term effects are still being studied. Malaysia’s National Fatwa Council declared them haram in 2015 because of their harm.

The tradition offers a wise rule here: when two harms cannot both be avoided, choose the lighter (akhaff al-ḍararayn). For a smoker who uses vaping as a step toward quitting, it is a move in the right direction. For someone who has never smoked, taking up vaping brings an addiction into a life that was free of it, and the reasons for avoiding smoking apply. Cannabis, whether smoked or vaped, raises a separate question because it intoxicates (Is weed haram?).

How can a Muslim quit smoking?

• Make an intention (niyya) for Allah. Caring for the body He entrusted to you (amāna) is worship.
• Use Ramadan. Smoking breaks the fast, so every smoker already goes without nicotine through the daylight hours (What breaks your fast?). Many people have turned that month into the end of the habit.
• Use medicine and support. Nicotine patches, gum, prescriptions, and quit lines greatly improve the chance of success, and seeking treatment follows the Sunnah.
• Expect to try more than once. Many former smokers tried several times before they stopped for good. Each attempt is rewarded.

The Prophet ﷺ used to seek refuge from the very things that keep people stuck in a habit:

«اللَّهُمَّ إِنِّي أَعُوذُ بِكَ مِنَ الْهَمِّ وَالْحَزَنِ، وَالْعَجْزِ وَالْكَسَلِ»

“O Allah, I seek refuge in You from worry and grief, from helplessness and laziness.”

Sahih al-Bukhari 6369

May Allah give every smoker who wants to stop the strength to do it, and fill each breath they take with health and His remembrance.