[Sca-cooks] Moslems and alcohol

[David Friedman]

>The range of utterly no alcohol to some alcohol so long as it isn't 
>brewed from grapes, appears to have varied by sect. I'm not sure 
>that there has been a loosening of the alcohol restriction over the 
>years in general. I believe that it is still forbidden to most 
>Moslems.

[I thought I already sent this, but it doesn't seem to have showed up]

I believe the range is from "no amount, however small, of anything 
that in sufficiently large amounts can intoxicate" to "nothing from 
fermented grapes, and don't get really drunk on anything."

And the division isn't, I think, so much by sects as by schools of 
the law. The Sunni recognize four mutually orthodox schools.

Another poster mentions "fruit of the grape" as being the original 
category. I haven't checked the Koranic passage, but my memory from 
the Hattox book on coffee is that it wasn't that explicit.
-- 
David/Cariadoc
www.daviddfriedman.com