So much was poured out on the streets of Medina that day...

So much was poured out on the streets of Medina that day that for a long time thereafter, whenever it rained, the color and smell of the wine came up from the ground." The prohibition was obeyed with rapidity throughout all the lands under Islamic sway ; a swelling tide of character and pursuit of higher intellectual, social and industrial objectives swiftly followed.

To this very day Muslims are to be found in every corner of the world who have jealously guarded their lips and lives from the contamination of alcohol. Indeed, for many of them the mere thought of touching the stuff has never entered their minds. So profoundly endemic has the sounder habit become. One of the defects of human laws is that the capricious changeableness of human nature affects them.

For instance, when America introduced prohibition and tried to enforce it by police methods, the result was the opposite of that which was desired ; and bootlegging, contraband and illegal consumption of liquor loosened respect not merely for that law, but for all law, while social behavior and morals slid downhill at avalanche speed.

Islam was successful in enforcing prohibition because it came with the force of a divine command, a God-inspired statute, interpreted to men in the light of reason and commonsense.

It is true that in America many well-meaning people had undertaken a far-reaching propaganda throughout the states against spirituous liquors, with books and films and speeches, for a decade, trying to explain the injuries to the spirit, to the body, to morals and to the finances of the individual and the nation which alcohol causes. The trouble was that the American efforts had their origin in the human idealism of a majority, who voted the 18th (Prohibition) Amendment to the U.S.

Constitution in 1918. An agonizing reappraisal was forced upon these idealists after 14 years of tragic experience: and in 1933 they were compelled to revoke Prohibition.

Their experience proved the ancient rule that lawgiving which goes too far beyond the moral level of the governed, provokes a human reaction which not only brings the particular law into disrepute, but the whole body of law with it ; and a foul mob of unscrupulous gangsters rises to pander to the illicit desires which no legislation can extirpate.

These mobs fight each other for control of the vast profits which come from moon shining and from bootlegging, and all the contraband that smuggles the object of unregenerate human craving.