SC - Brangwayna
Ron and Laurene Wells
tinyzoo at aracnet.com
Mon Feb 28 15:33:36 PST 2000
The situation as I understand it was:
There were (and are) four mutually orthodox schools of law in Sunni
Islam. In other words, members of one school of law do not regard
members of another as heretics, but they disagree in how they
interpret Islamic law.
On the subject of alcohol, the most tolerant of the four schools
holds that the prohibition applies to wine (i.e. fermented grape
juice) and to getting drunk on other things, but not to drinking
other things. And at least one interpretation holds that "drunk"
means "so drunk that you cannot tell the earth from the sky or a man
from a woman." The least tolerant school holds that it is forbidden
to drink any quantity at all of anything that, in sufficiently large
quantities, gets you drunk.
I think my source for all of this is Hattox's book on the
introduction of coffee; he discusses it because there was some
dispute as to whether the prohibition applied to coffee.
Also, there is apparently a tradition according to which the Prophet
said that date beer fermented no more than three days was permitted.
I don't know what the Shia position is.
So far as recipes are concerned, the nearest thing I know of is the
description of how to make arrack (distilled liquor from sugar cane)
in the _Ain I Akbari_. I don't know if the Mughals considered arrack
permitted, or if it was being made by the Hindus, Jews, or
Christians, or what.
David Friedman
Professor of Law
Santa Clara University
ddfr at best.com
http://www.best.com/~ddfr/
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