SC - Islamic alchohol?

[david friedman]

At 12:16 AM -0500 2/29/00, Christine A Seelye-King wrote:
>  > 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.
>
>	This is very hard to deal with when followers of this particular sect
>come into a health food store and want to buy a medicinal tincture
>without alcohol.  Alcohol is used to extract volatile oils and
>constituents from plants, often it is the only solvent that will work.
>However, there is so little alcohol in a dropper full of tincture, that
>you manufacture more alcohol in your body when you eat a banana than you
>get from one dose.   Explaining this to the intolerant does little good,
>however, because the word of the law is being interpreted so strictly.  I
>would love to be able to say "just squirt the first drop on the ground,
>and you should be covered!".
>	Christianna

If it makes you feel as though Islamic law is illogical or backwards 
or something, you might consider that precisely the same approach 
exists in American law. It is called the Delaney amendment.

David Friedman
Professor of Law
Santa Clara University
ddfr at best.com
http://www.best.com/~ddfr/