[Sca-cooks] Why no alcohol?

[david friedman]

>Depends on their sect, Selene. IIRC, the phrase is the "fermented fruit of
>the grape" and many Muslims follow that exactly- drink anything but
>fermented grape products.

As best I recall, interpretations range from "you should not drink
any quantity of anything that, in sufficient quantity, would be
intoxicating," which I think of as their version of the Delany
amendment, to "no fermented grape juice, and don't get really drunk
on anything else."

>Of course, they're also like Christians in that others don't drink anything
>intoxicating. One of our sources for documentation for coffee is the debates
>they held over the intoxicating qualities of coffee/caffeine, round about
>the pre-teen/14th centuries.

Mid-fifteenth and thereafter, I think, at least according to Hattox.
--
David/Cariadoc
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/