Some religions are closely associated with drug taking. Rastafarianism is famous for it’s use of marajuana or lamb’s bread as it is known to help achieve oneness with God, Hindu sadus (itinerant holy men) regularly use Bhang (a liquid form of marajuana extract) and certain shamanistic traditions use peyote and datura to induce trances and hallucinations in order to facilitate communication with the spirit world. Hemp seeds, discovered by archaeologists in Pazyryk, Southern Siberia have been dated to around the same time as use by the Scythians of cannabis (on the Black Sea coast) was recorded by Herodotus in the 5th century BC. The three religions of the Book, Judaism, Christianity and Islam are not well known for having drug cultures associated with them so it comes as something as a surprise to learn that İslam, perhaps the most puritannical of the three, has a strong undercurrent of marajuana use throughout it’s long history.

The issue of substance abuse, intoxicants and Islam rose to the media’s attention in the middle of this month when police carried out a raid on the home of private citizen Nazif Kamil Örde in İstanbul, for the benefit of current affairs documentary programme Arena. They smashed their way into the home of the man that newspapers have nicknamed ‘the junkie teacher/ Esrarcı Hoca’, a self styled imam  who interspersed his lessons on Islamic philosophy with some strong tokes on a lit joint and encouraged the younger followers sat around his living room to do likewise. He extolled the virtues of cannabis and said that no-one could make him stop – smoking was his duty to God.

The headlines screamed ‘A joint in one hand, the Koran in the other’ and over 32000 people have watched the video clip of him being arrested broadcast via the web on Hürriyet Video. The Esrarcı Hoca’s behaviour has largely been interpreted as the actions of a drug pusher trying to drum up business and he has made himself somewhat of a joke to serious media pundits with over the top statements like; ‘My child will learn to roll joints and smoke at the age of 6....how can you outlaw weed, God orders us to smoke it....friends, you can’t take away the gun on a Muslim’s belt, the horse beneath him or the joint in his hand..’. However his behaviour and statements do raise the issue of whether cannabis is forbidden or haram in Islam.

Generally in orthodox Islam conservative scholars deem cannabis an intoxicant and therefore according to the Hadith it is classified as haram (as is coffee). The Hadith is the book of sayings of the prophet Muhammed which states; ‘if much intoxicates, then even a little is haram’. There are dissenting voices however who say that the word used in the Koran itself is Khamr – which translated means fermented grape – and that this classification doesn’t cover use of marajuana. Liberal muslims believe that 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.

Certainly some Islamic countries are closely associated with dope smoking and cultivation (Afghanistan, Lebanon, Indonesia, Arab Egypt and Morocco for example) but its use is often for recreational purposes and largely takes place among the lower classes. in Turkey whilst cannabis use is not tolerated by the police or state there is a smoking culture and a well known saying ‘helal ottur, günahı yoktur/ it’s a holy weed that carries no sin’. The intoxicant use of cannabis may in fact have permeated Islamic culture because alcohol is forbidden to adherents of Islam. André Malraux wrote, in Man's Fate; ‘There is always a need for intoxication: China has opium, Islam has hashish, the West has woman.’

Use for explicitly spiritual purposes is most common amongst Sufi believers who are the most mystical of Islam’s adherents. According to one Arab legend, Haydar, the Persian monk who founded the Sufis, came across the cannabis plant in 1155AD the Persian mountains. Under normal circumstances he was a reserved and quiet man but when he returned to his monastery after eating some cannabis leaves, his disciples were amazed at how talkative and animated he seemed. They cajoled Haydar into telling them what he had done to make him so full of spirit and then they went out into the mountains and tried the cannabis for themselves. The Sufis' religion gives great importance to direct communion between God and man and it is believed that cannabis used as a sacrament – an aid to enlightenment.

The most famous Muslim users of cannabis are the Hashishin, from whom our modern word assassin stems. These men were a warrior sect who lived in the mountains of Afghanistan and waged a guerilla war of political murder. Based upon Marco Polo’s tales of the Old Man in the Mountains, who duped his followers into carrying out evil deeds so they could enter the earthly paradise he had shown them under the influence of drugs it is traditional in the West to believe that the Hashishin first consumed cannabis and then set about slaying their opponents. However Ernest Abel, in his book Marijuana: The First 12,000 Years claims that Marco Polo never identified hashish as the drug used by the Assassins and that historically cannabis and its derivatives have never been equated with violence in the Middle East. In modern times the Mujahadeen used marijuana during their war against the Russians but they made use of it to keep them going on their interminable marches across the frozen mountains of Afghanistan and not to inspire blood lust.

The use of cannabis by Muslims is as unlikely to die out as the use of cannabis by any other group. Although religion dictates abstinence the human spirit has always sought out methods to escape mundane reality and smoking joints is a relatively harmless and cheap way of freeing one’s mind for an afternoon. As for the Esrarcı Hoca and his interesting announcements on the laws dictating the use of marijuana he may well have been smoking weed’s stronger and more pscychoactive cousin Skunk!