<![CDATA[This study examines how ‘Alī Badr’s novel ‘Āzif al-Ghuyūm reconstructs the concept of al-Madīnah al-Fāḍilah through representations of alcohol consumption in Iraq and Belgium. While alcohol is commonly associated with moral decline in Islamic and Arab discourses, the novel presents it as a cultural and symbolic medium through which characters negotiate identity, social belonging, and visions of an ideal society. Employing a descriptive-qualitative design, the study analyzes dialogues and monologues in the novel through an interdisciplinary framework that combines realism theory, balāghah studies, and literary representation theory. Data were collected through close reading, textual selection, and categorization procedures and analyzed through description, interpretation, and contextualization. The findings demonstrate that the novel reconfigures al-Madīnah al-Fāḍilah not as a fixed religious or political ideal but as a dynamic cultural construct emerging from everyday social practices. Alcohol functions as a narrative device that exposes tensions between individual freedom and collective morality, while simultaneously revealing contrasting cultural perceptions in Iraq and Belgium. The study argues that the novel challenges conventional binary oppositions between virtue and vice and contributes to contemporary debates on utopian and dystopian imagination in modern Arabic literature.]]>
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