The Qur’an addresses three practices together and separately as threats to individual and social wellbeing: intoxicants, gambling, and riba. This article keeps three kinds of content clearly separate: what the Qur’an states, traditional and modern interpretation of that text, and contemporary statistics from named sources.
What the Qur’an says: intoxicants and gambling
“O you who have believed, indeed, intoxicants, gambling, [sacrificing on] stone altars [to other than Allah], and divining arrows are but defilement from the work of Satan, so avoid it that you may be successful.” — Al-Ma’idah 5:90
“Satan only wants to cause between you animosity and hatred through intoxicants and gambling and to prevent you from remembrance of Allah and from prayer. So will you not desist?” — Al-Ma’idah 5:91
The passage frames the harm in social and spiritual terms — enmity between people, and distraction from prayer and remembrance — alongside whatever private harm might result.
Contemporary statistics: intoxicants
According to the World Health Organization’s Global status report on alcohol and health and treatment of substance use disorders (2024), alcohol consumption is attributable to an estimated 2.6 million deaths per year worldwide — 4.7% of all deaths globally. Source: WHO, 2024.
Contemporary statistics: gambling
According to the UK Gambling Commission’s Gambling Survey for Great Britain annual report, 2.7% of adults in Great Britain scored in the problem gambling range in the 2024 survey year, indicating serious harm and likely loss of behavioural control. Source: UK Gambling Commission, 2024.
These figures describe outcomes documented by public health and regulatory bodies; they are not Qur’anic claims, and are presented here only as context for why the underlying concern remains a live one today.
What the Qur’an says: riba
Riba is an Arabic term the Qur’an addresses directly, generally translated as usury or prohibited financial increase. The Qur’an treats riba as a matter of fairness between lender and borrower, describing it in Al-Baqarah 2:275-279 as contrasted with fair trade, and warning against it in strong terms.
What the Qur’an says, versus modern economic interpretation
What the Qur’an says: riba is prohibited, and framed as a form of financial exploitation contrasted with legitimate trade and charity.
Modern economic interpretation: how this principle applies to contemporary financial instruments — interest-bearing loans, mortgages, bonds, central bank rates — is a subject of active, sometimes contested, debate among Muslim economists and scholars. This site does not present any single modern application of the riba principle as settled or uncontested; readers researching Islamic finance specifically should treat that as a distinct and more technical topic than what’s covered here.
Common questions
Does the Qur’an ban all forms of risk-taking, or just gambling? The Qur’an’s concern (maysir) is specifically with games of chance and betting, not with ordinary commercial risk such as investment or trade.
Is all interest considered riba? This is genuinely debated among scholars and economists, and this site does not adjudicate it — see the distinction above.