Is marijuana a religious right?
Hemp in Religion. Islam: The Koran prohibits Muslims from drinking wine but it does not specifically mention any other intoxicants. While some Muslim liberals say that what the prophet really objected to was drunkenness, i.e. excessive drinking, other, very conservative scholars claim that the prohibition encompasses various kinds of substances, from opium to coffee. Hemp was prohibited in Egypt on that basis, and so was coffee in the Ottoman Turkish empire (see A Chronology of Psychoactive Substance Use). In 1925 the Egyptian government asked England to support adding Indian hemp to an international list of substances to be controlled. The Egyptian government was opposed to alcohol too, but that was not made illegal in Western countries. Opposition to cannabis on religious grounds in Islamic countries has essentially been based on narrow-minded dogma that seeks to regulate all private pleasure in the name of religion. Many Islamic societies were tolerant of cannabis until internationa
