Al-Ma'idah 91: With wine (intoxicating food) and gambling, Shaytan only desires to put enmity and hatred between you and to keep you away from remembering Allah and from prayer. So, abandon these.

Let's continue; we will explain.

Satan only wants, through drink and gambling, to cast enmity and hatred among you, and to keep you from remembering Allah and from prayer. So now you have given these up, haven't you? He says. How beautifully He says it. Now look, this much: I created you honourable, I gave you of My spirit, I gave you a mind to think, with this mind that tells good from bad I made Myself known to you, I took you as My addressee. After this much bounty, you've given it up now, haven't you, you say? How beautiful.

If you say, no, I haven't given it up, woe has come upon that person. Those who cannot master their selves can turn to any path through the temptation Satan gives. Satan is man's enemy. Allah Almighty also tells us this with His verse.

Satan will set traps before man. Before the people who turn to Allah, sir, by setting traps for them, the people turning to their Lord, to lead them to kufr, he will roam their blood vessels and tempt them. I, he says, will set traps before the servants who come to You; I will keep them from coming to You, he says. And Allah Almighty says to Satan: if that servant, He says, turns to you, take him, He says; that servant of Mine to you I will give. Yes, because they are people of Hell, and Satan is of Hell. Following that, in the verse, (?) (?). That is why, if the human self does not reach perfection, the self is deceived by the rosy look of this swamp of a world, as if it would never die, it inclines to this world; on Allah and His Messenger, on the Hereafter, it turns its back; it wants to live the world.

Then Satan puts the halter on his neck, puts the halter on his neck, and leads him along like that. He closes the paths to Allah for him, shows the swamp paths as the straight path, his Hereafter he makes him (?). Those who cannot master their selves can turn to any path through the temptation Satan gives. People, through Satan's temptation, by doing what Allah Almighty has made unlawful, by feeling a greatness in themselves and by satisfying their own selves, think they are valuable persons among people. Like what? Like the tattoos they get on their bodies today as a fashion. As if they themselves become valuable.

What kind of feeling is this, what kind of understanding: he gets this tattoo, and bares himself stark naked everywhere. According to the verse: let Satan not strip you. Not carrying out Allah's command, but the (?) given by the self and desire, by that Satan, by carrying that out, the person who sees himself as great.

Actually, actually, a poor wretch dragging himself to destruction. Greatness is between Allah and man: by how much a person masters his self, by how much he yearns for his Lord, by his trust in Him, by his submission: that is greatness. Between Allah and the servant. Greatness among servants toward one another, however, is the destruction of the wretched.

On what basis do you say this? I say it according to the verse. Is there or isn't there? Of course there is.

What did Korah do? He would stand before his people and act arrogantly. By Allah, with possessions. And in the coffeehouse they would say, if only we were like Korah. I'm telling you the verses, mind you. These are verses. When Allah Almighty one day sank Korah into the earth together with his palace, they said: good thing we weren't in his place. So greatness among people was their destruction of one another. But if what is between Allah and man is our submission to our Lord, then those who attain salvation, over those who perish are the ones above; these are the winners, He says. Yes.

Those wretches get tattoos on their bodies, and to show the tattoos they strip naked; that they have fallen to the lowest of the low, that they are abased, that they push the limits of their Lord's commands, and finally, having cancelled the Hereafter, like a (?) that they are going; in this world, to the smallest fire or to the smallest (?) a person cannot touch his finger, while the burning fire of the world of the Hereafter, how will you imagine it?

One day the sultan's daughter leaves the palace.

She loses her way. Night falls. She sees, somewhere, a light. She has gone far from the city, too.

A knock at the door. A young man.

Come in, sister, he says. What do you want?

I am the sultan's daughter. I've lost my way, she says. Tonight I will stay here as a guest.

Fine, but I'm unmarried, he says.

Well, she says, if I stay outside it'll be worse, she says. All right, he says. Come.

He gives his bed to the girl. He draws a curtain between them, and he himself, by the fire, by the brazier, now and then would put his hand into the fire and pull it out. And the girl, since she was left with an unmarried young man, was afraid, thinking, I wonder if he'll assault me, and through that curtain she watched the young man. Morning comes; come on, he says, get up, I'll take you to the palace. He takes her to the palace.

The sultan says: cut off this boy's head.

And the girl says: father, he did nothing to me. How could he not, he says, if you stayed together, he says. How could he not? By Allah, she says, he didn't touch me, she says, he protected me, she says. Well, is there any proof, he says. There is proof, she says. What is it? He gave his bed and drew a curtain between us, she says. Until morning, by the brazier, his hand, she says, (?) he put into the fire and pulled out, put in and pulled out, she says. Why, he says? She tells him: I don't know, she says. He calls the boy: come here, he says. Why did you make that move, he says? My self told me to assault her, he says.

And I said, he says: this is unlawful for me. She is my guest. If my self can bear this fire, it can bear the fire in Hell too. When I put my hand in, he says, I could not bear that fire. No, I cannot bear that fire either, he says. To it, he says, I was giving up my intention, he says. I have given my daughter to you, he says.

Yes.

So if a person is governed by Allah's command, everywhere you become the sultan of the earth. But if he becomes a captive of his self, among people arrogance, going after the cause of tolerance, so they'll say, look how nicely this one dresses; (?) stripping stark naked. This brings about people's destruction of one another. That is the situation today, these people's state of destruction. Yes.

People, through Satan's temptation, by doing what Allah Almighty has made unlawful, by doing it, feel a greatness in themselves, and by satisfying their own selves think they are valuable persons among people. Recalling that they will be shown respect, they think they (?). Wretched people gripped by an inferiority complex. Such traits are traps Satan sets for people. With the human self also enjoying such states, a person, against Allah Almighty, has rebelled. Such people, knowing full well they are sinning, cannot give up anything of their self, and so they become sinners. Yes.

Allah Almighty, without distinguishing among those He created, with His verse, calling out to people: Satan, through drink and gambling, only wants to cast among you enmity and hatred, and to keep you from remembering Allah and from prayer.

When a person is about to stand up for prayer, Satan tempts him. There's still time, you'll pray a bit later. So what? If the person overcomes that feeling and turns to prayer, of his own kind, he says, he sends a two-legged one, (?) he says. And then you see, just as he gets up to pray, either a phone call comes, or a phone call, but Satan (?) anyway, look, he says. (?)

A different thing.

There too, he says, if I (?), I tell him, he says: pray quickly, pray quickly. And he, he says, praying quickly, he says, like a rooster or a hen picking up feed, pecking and pecking, he prays his prayer. And that prayer, he says, is thrown back in his face, he says. Yes, Satan's games.

When people drink, the alcohol they take passes into the blood, and alcohol in the blood causes clotting. In this case, as the blood carried to the brain (?) thickens, blood not reaching the brain in sufficient amount causes numbness in the brain. The person becomes forgetful in his memory and starts talking out of turn. He cannot grasp what he is saying. In this case, if the person in front of him also has alcohol, since he too will be in the same state, when he answers him back, fights begin. They even go as far as killing each other. In this case hatred and enmity begin between them. At the same time, since alcohol strains the heart greatly, heart diseases appear.

Indeed, there are heart valves. Clotted blood. The strain on that heart. Allah Almighty created the heart to withstand one atmosphere of pressure. 82-83 kilometres of air pressure, that pressure on the earth's surface, upon us is one atmosphere of pressure. The heart is set to overcome this one atmosphere of pressure. When one goes up high, since the internal pressure is greater than the external pressure, in the ears and the nose bleeding occurs. Yes. So if you take alcohol, and this alcohol causes clotting in the blood, think of the force with which that heart must press, the pump it gives to the blood, think of the endurance of those heart valves.

What will you do, eh? You will become a heart patient. There is no 'heart' among Muslims. Heart. When we were children, that is, sixty-some years ago, (?). The unbelievers died of heart attacks. Our elders would say: it will come to us too, it will come to us too. And I would say: how will it come? I would say this must be some illness. It turns out this was a scourge like drink. Because Islam knows nothing of drink. Islam does not drink. A Muslim does not drink. Yes. A Muslim knows that drink is unlawful. A Muslim never approaches what Allah has made unlawful.

These are the Muslims whose faith is weak. Of course the heart will come too.

Many diseases connected to it will come along too. Yes.

Gambling is like this too; it drags a person to destruction; by giving all he has to gambling he drags his family into misery; in this situation, people with weak faith who tie everything to material things either deny or kill the person who took their money; and if they cannot do that, they show hatred and enmity toward him; in these situations, people drift away from remembering Allah and invoking Allah, from prayer and worship, and their hearts harden; they don't even want to mention Allah's word; so the traps that Satan and the self set for man are very sad. Yes.

Perhaps it may even cause such people to pass into the Hereafter as unbelievers as well. Yet Allah Almighty, with Islam, commands togetherness and unity. Drink and gambling, however, drive a person away from togetherness and unity. Just as they drag people step by step to destruction, at the same time they sow hatred and enmity among people. By keeping people away from these situations, a good life for them wishing to provide, Allah Almighty, addressing His servants with verses, the hardships and wrongs they will meet, by making these known to them, wants to keep them away from evils. Now you have given these up, haven't you?

He says. Allah Almighty, who addresses man with gentle and sweet words in saying this, because He loves people very much, wishing that they not suffer any wrong, compassionate and merciful, addressing people, wants them to be far from evils and from Satan's temptations. So if a person still follows Satan's trail, falls for his temptation, and chases after his self, moving away from Allah and His Messenger, he is kept from remembering Allah and from worshipping Him. In this case all responsibility is loaded on his back, and he has wronged his own self. That is why we say a person must reform his self and strengthen his character, so that he can keep away from evils.