Sanha stated that “Muslim Jurists have for a long time condemned cigarette smoking.” Now that makes plenty of sense. Having read the Quran from cover to cover in Arabic, I have no doubt that if the prophet Muhammad were alive today, he would forbid the smoking of cigarettes.

Now Muslim-owned businesses are being urged to stop selling cigarettes. I think this is also sensible. How can a God-fearing person possibly knowingly sentence people to a slow and painful death? How can a Muslim pray five times a day and then go to his shop and sell cigarettes to a pregnant mother, for example?

And how can any dutiful Muslim wash and take care of their body as prescribed by Islam and then go and put the many poisons from smoking cigarettes in their body? This not only makes no sense but is a great hypocrisy indeed.

Whether cigarettes contain pigs’ blood or rum or wine products should be irrelevant. As a matter of fact, any doctor would agree that there is far worse in a cigarette than any minute amount of pig or alcohol product can possibly be.

South Africa’s largest cigarette manufacturer, British American Tobacco SA (Batsa), naturally denies it all in a report in the local Cape Argus, a local newspaper in Cape Town. However, what the cigarette manufacturers cannot deny is the thousands of deaths and illnesses their industry regularly causes. Cigarettes are the leading health concern in South Africa after HIV/AIDS. And that is not in dispute by anybody, regardless of their religion.

So if you are a Muslim smoker, what should you do? Do you wait to find out if there is indeed pig and alcohol additions to cigarettes? Do you find a way to quit in the meantime? And what if you quit and then find that cigarettes are free of these things. Do you then take up smoking again, fully aware of the other, and one may argue, more serious health risks?

Perhaps Muslim or otherwise, we were given a body to look after with love and respect. I was taught that we were created in God’s image and that we are the creation of God. How sad that so many religious people then go on to desecrate this great gift of our body by regularly and systematically abusing it with toxins from cigarette smoking.

If you are a smoker and any of this resonates with your beliefs, for God’s love, quit. There are many good ways to help you quit smoking wherever you are. You may find that to stop smoking is the greatest show of gratitude you can give to God. And in return, going through the process in a responsible and healing way can bring you spiritually, physically, emotionally and mentally closer to God and closer to a life of true contentment.

SuzanneZacharia

Stop Smoking Hypnosis Cape Town

Stop Smoking EFT Author

Call 021 556 7088

Or call me direct on 072 700 5334

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Clearly this was a PR exercise that failed. But the point is, most people do not associate athletics with smoking. Just like you would not associate healthy living with smoking. Put it this way, if you were to choose a new doctor, would you feel confident choosing a doctor who smokes? If you were to visit a hypnotherapist, would you feel assured of the outcome with a hypnotist who smoked?

Although smacking of Big Brother, it does actually make sense to stop smoking in restaurants and bars, I have just come to Cape Town in South Africa from London in the UK. In Cape Town, smoking is allowed in bars and restaurants. Some restaurants make an attempt to make a non-smoking section, the rare coffee bar is non-smoking, but most bars and restaurants frankly stink. In London, smoking was banned in all public places last year, and it is a pleasure now to go out for a drink or a meal. There was initially much worry about going smoke-free. Businesses were worried about losing custom. However, in the UK most people are non-smokers now, and so this was a great deal easier.

And despite the health risks, in Cape Town, just like Beijing, there is a need for a drug. Nicotine happens to be a perfect drug. It calms you when you need calming, wakes you when you need to be alert, is easily delivered into the body, and is legally available.

Smoking is a coping mechanism. Smoking takes the not-Fun out of life and the smoker is left with Fun. Smoking takes the not-Happy out of life so the smoker is left with Happy. Without smoking, the smoker is faced with a great deal of not-Fun and not-Happy, and life is very grim indeed. People need to be healthy. However, they also need to be happy. Sometimes being happy is more important than being healthy. Why should it matter if you die early of cancer or a heart attack, if you have lived a happy life? And who actually wants to live a long and miserable life?

This is why nicotine replacement and various wonder pills alone fail. When the smoker is given ways to be naturally happy, such as with EFT, hypnosis, or meditation, then they can finally be calmly free from smoking. And when a nation is healed, when it becomes stronger from within, you get smoke-free restaurants. It really is a holistic matter.

China has a great deal of trauma from the past, as does Cape Town. The pain of the people needs the balm of nicotine. I sincerely hope that one day, this pain will release. With this release, there will no longer be a need for cigarettes. And then China can rest assured that its bars and restaurants will be smoke-free.

Suzanne Zacharia

Author and Stop Smoking Expert