Smoking is Haram..!!!

DECEIVED HAPPINESS IN SMOKING
By Sofiandy Zakaria

A lecturer of Communication Science Departement /
Vice Dean of FISIP-UMJ 2009-2012.

I was a beginner in smoking since I was at last year in a primary school. I was about 12 year old. My father was a heavy smoker. He always even broke his fasting during ramadhan by smoking, a moment after drinking some plain water. Even so I don’t think it is true. At first I took some cigarettes from him unknowingly. Once upon a time he knew I was smoking. He became really angry. When I was in secondary school , my father had been ill for several months due to a lung cancer disease. He was treated in the hospitol . I was deeply sad when finally he passed away when I was seventeen year old.
That experience doesn’t make me afraid. Smoking habit fo me was growing up to 40 year old. I used to live in England for one year when I was assigned to take post graduate training on Media Design and Production at Plymouth Polytechnic. In the first three months in UK, my wife always sent me typical Indonesian cigarettes so- called Gudang Garam. In London the price of Gudang Garam was terribly expensive i.e. ₤ 3.5 equivalent to Rp. 10.500,- ( based on at that time rate Rp.3000,-/₤1 ). Compare to the price of Gudang Garam in Indonesia at that time only Rp.450,-
Since I was thirty year old I actually felt an interest in my well-being. I always take an exercise almost everyday, playing tennis and swimming once a week. Meanwhile I couldn’t stop smoking throughly. Since that time I intended to stop smoking at all. In fact my dream didn’t come true instantly. It found difficulty for me to stop smoking addicted feeling. I was even addicted again and again when I arrived back to my home country town until I had a heart attack disease unexpectedly in 1997. Three years after I quitted smoking I had a heart attack substantially. Fortunately I got healthy life back any more after I spent Rp. 19.500.000 for paying my previous bad habit. Thank God!

Smoking fact
“ Cigarette smoke contains over 4,800 chemicals, 69 of which are known to cause cancer. Quitting smoking cuts the risk of lung cancer, many other cancers, heart disease, stroke, other lung diseases, and other respiratory illnesses. Among infants to 18 months of age, second hand smoke is associated with 300,000 cases of bronchitis and pneumonia each year. About 8.6 million people in the U.S. have at least one serious illness caused by smoking. Second hand smoke is classified by the EPA as a known human carcinogen. In 1908 a law was passed in New York City making it illegal for women to smoke in public. Smoking is a major factor in coronary heart disease and stroke. Smoking is responsible for approximately 90 percent of lung cancer deaths. When inhaled in cigarette smoke nicotine reaches the brain faster than drugs that enter the body intravenously. If both parents smoke, a teenager is more than twice as likely to smoke than a child whose parents are both non-smokers. In 17th-century Massachusetts, smoking was legal only at a distance of five miles from any town. President Lyndon Johnson used to smoke three packs of cigarettes a day. Pregnant women who smoke are more likely to deliver underweight babies. A person who smokes a pack of cigarettes a day will on average lose two teeth every ten years. Smokers are likely to die on average six and a half years earlier than non-smokers. People that smoke have 10 times as many wrinkles as a person that does not smoke. Three years after a person quits smoking, their chance of having a heart attack falls substantially. Studies show that couples that smoke during the time of conception have a higher chance of having a girl. The Cree Indians used smoking pipes as currency. The average person who stops smoking requires one hour less sleep a night. Smoking in pregnancy accounts for an estimated 20 to 30 percent of low-birth weight babies. As smoking declines among the White non-Hispanic population, tobacco companies have targeted both African Americans and Hispanics with intensive advertising. When Sir Walter Raleigh introduced tobacco into England in the early 1600s, King James argued against its use. More than 400,000 deaths in the U.S. each year are from smoking-related illnesses.”( Quoted from The blog about cigarette: This blog about cigarette, smoking and cigarette collection. Here cigarette is jus for collection, not to be consumed. Smoking is hazardous for your health)
How about smoking fact in our beloved country Indonesia? I do believe the fact are more really terrible…………..
So, I absolutely agree with the fatwa issued by Muhammadiyah, the country’s second-largest Islamic Organization, saying that Smoking is haram!
Of course, this is biased and an infringement of the right to live healthily. Living healthily without smoking is a personal choice and decision, however.