[distortion]

Of course Haskell has closures, there's always a scope to close over:

f x = (\y -> x + y)

[blasdel]

That's still just high-level lexical sugar - the 'scope' is not captured, just rewritten. After desugaring, there is no scope left, even lexically.

It's completely different from a 'closure' in a language that has variables.