Wahid Azal has spoken in an interview on the website realitysandwich.com about a favorable fatwa issued by Iran’s Grand Ayatollah on the use of psychoactive plants in Muslim culture. Azal is a scholar and Islamic Sufi mystic founder of the Fatimiya order who has incorporated into their religious practice the ayahuasca or haoma (Persian version of the Amazon brew).

In March 2014, Grand Ayatollah Rohani formally issued a fatwa (a legal pronouncement of Islam emitted by a religious law specialist) determining that the use of hallucinogens and psychoactive substances is lawful (halal) and, therefore, its use is permitted for Shiite Muslims, under the supervision of qualified experts, and that these botanicals do not damage the mind. Furthermore, the declaration specifically emphasizes not finding objections to the visionary component of these plants, with which people have reported contemplating heaven and hell.

This decree of Ayatollah Rohani is historic because it may have significant future ramifications, reverberating far beyond the Shia Muslim world. Even more important is that such a singular authority figure in the Iranian orthodoxy shows such a remarkably open mind, in stark contrast with more antiquated interpretations of Islam. No religious establishment has ever regarded this issue favorably: the equivalent in a Western context would be that the Vatican made a similar declaration on ayahuasca for Catholics.

The Sufi mystic Wahid Azal concludes: “Look at the art and architecture in Islamic Iran: domes, arches and porticoes with intricate patterns, designs in mosaics and tiles in various mosques and classical buildings. Anyone with enough experience can recognize entheogenic causality in visionary landscapes that inspire. They are the ‘imaginalis mundus’, realms where the prophets and holy men of all traditions received his visions and inspirations, which are an integral part of a high spiritual culture in which we are initiated from an early age. They are in sacred poetry and literature, elements of nature around us with all its colors, shapes, smells and sounds, but they are also in foods we eat and in our most sacred herb, harmal”.