SC - Stuffed avocados- Trudy's address

[Sara K. Tallarovic]

At 10:25 PM -0500 1/5/01, LrdRas at aol.com wrote:
>In a message dated 1/5/01 6:26:34 PM Eastern Standard Time, RButler96 at aol.com
>writes:
>
><< Wouldn't period Turkish food be Islamic and thus negate the possibility
>  of alchohol?  Or, am I taking a modern dietary law interpretation to
>medieval
>  food?
>
>       Khadijah >>
>
>Yes and no. At least one sect interprets the prohibition  of  alcohol
>literally. They simply pour the first drop of of  the alcoholic everage on
>the ground thereby fulfilling the letter of the Koran which  forbids A DROP
>to pass your lips. :-) Other sects consume  strong distilled spirits and
>beverages fermented from things other than grapes. Al-Islam is a religion 
>which like Christianity (or any other) is composed of many sects and schools
>so blanket statements seldom hold true for all adherents of Islam except in a
>most general way.


I can't speak for all versions of Islam, but the main division among 
Sunni Muslims on this question, as I understand it, is based not on 
sects but on legal schools. There are four different legal schools 
that recognize each other as orthodox, but disagree in various ways 
on interpretation of the law (Maliki, Hanbali, ...). With regard to 
alcohol, they range from the position that anything that, in 
sufficiently large quantity, can get you drunk is forbidden in any 
quantity however small, to the position that the prohibition is 
limited pretty much to fermented drinks from grapes and getting 
really drunk on other things. I believe that was the school  most 
popular with the Ottoman Turks.

What Islamic sect is it that believes that pouring the first drop 
satisfies the requirement? That sounds implausible to me--more like a 
good story than a real legal doctrine--but I could easily be wrong.
- -- 
David Friedman
Professor of Law
Santa Clara University
ddfr at best.com
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/