Boycott: Restaurants that Serve Alcohol

As Believers in this part of the world, by right we should NOT even bother considering eating at restaurants that serve alcohol & liquor, if we love Allah, His Deen, and our hearts.

This is Why:

1) It’s a supply-demand thing
The past 10 years have seen a rapid rise in restaurants serving alcohol – what happened? Businesses realized, that by serving alcohol in this majority-Muslim country didn’t seem to harm their sales or affect demands from the Muslims and non-drinking market – serving alcohol had a negligible effect on their business, despite restaurants serving alcohol never being eligible for Halal certification.
This reveals that businesses having an underlying lack of respect or sensitivity for the “official religion” of the country. But also, on the part of the consumers, it also displays how careless we are at unintentionally or subconsciously ‘allowing’ this culture to propagate because we are “just eating the food, not the alcohol”

So, by strictly cutting off this ‘demand’ in this economy, we are playing our role in the “cooperation” which was prohibited by Allah:
وَلَا تَعَاوَنُوا عَلَى الْإِثْمِ وَالْعُدْوَانِ ۚ
“And do not cooperate in sins and transgression” (Al-Ma’idah 5:2)

Now think about this : would you go to a restaurant which serves marijuana, cocaine and heroin, if it’s “legal”?
No, because it’s filthy haram stuff; in fact, we’ll probably boycott with extreme prejudice. Well, if you think about it, these drugs are ‘Haram’ because of Qiyas (analogy) FROM the original ‘Haram’ ruling of Alcohol in the first place.
So if we consider a restaurant serving drugs to be filthy because of something that was Haram “because of Qiyas”, how about restaurants serving substances which have direct Haram from the Qur’an and the Sunnah?

It’s actually absurd when we put things into perspective: people go to great lengths to promote boycotting companies because of ‘suspicions’/'conspiracy' that so-and-so company may be ‘contributing’ to certain parties or countries,
..and yet here we do nothing to play our roles to discourage the rampant and blatant haram in our backyard.

2) You’ll get better food in Paradise
“Life is short. You only live once.”
So often we hear this: now let’s change our paradigm to how we approach it.

Sure, we may think we are ‘losing out’ from not being able to eat this stuff. But have we lost tawakkul and trust in Allah when He says He has reserved for His Slaves what the eye has never seen, the ear has never heard, and the Heart cannot comprehend? (Hadith Qudsy, Narrated @ Sahih Al-Bukhari, Book #54, Hadith #467)
If that’s how awesome the food in dunya is, can you imagine how much more awesome will the food in Paradise be?
Keep your eyes on the prize, guys – we’ve got better stuff waiting on the other side – we just gotta there!

The Prophet said, "whosoever leaves something for the sake of Allah, then Allah, the Mighty and Magnificent, will replace it with something better than it." (Narrated in Ahmad and An-Nasa’I, with a sahih isnad)

3) There are SO many other Halal alternatives.
Seriously. Alhamdulillah.

4) Many of these restaurants have some food which are cooked with alcohol.
And some waiters don’t know or they just don’t tell you.

5) Protect your faith!
No, we’re not saying that these restaurants are HARAM per se. But just like ‘work’ isn’t just about “not violating company policies”, religion isn’t just about steering from Haram – it’s about performing what’s best and most Pleasing to our Creator, within this limited amount of time in the dunya!

The Prophet said (the meaning of which) there are things which are clearly halal, and things which are clearly haram – and in between are things which are the “grey areas”. If we stay away from the grey areas, we’ve protected our religion and our honour (Al-Bukhari, Muslim).
And is there anything else more worth protecting?

Imagine going to a pharmacy, and you finding out they don’t just serve medicine, they also serve lethal poisons. And you’re no drug expert.
Take the gamble? Or just go to another risk-free pharmacy?

 
So this is our advice from the heart to our brothers and sisters out there: Abandon restaurants that serve alcohol. 

Sure, we may be “only one person”, but big things have small beginnings. And Allah will not change the state of a people until we first change what is in ourselves.