[Sca-cooks] Alcohol in Islamic countries

[David Friedman]

>There was in period, as well as today, a lively debate about
>the permissibility of drinking alcohol based upon religions sources.
>And just like in Europe, people violated religious rules time and
>again.

The second is clearly true. My impression on the first is that the 
disagreement among the schools of Sunni law was over just what range 
of drinks was forbidden. At one extreme you had the equivalent of the 
Delaney Amendment--you were forbidden to drink any quantity, however 
small, of anything that in sufficiently large quantities was 
intoxicating. At the other end you had the view that the drinking of 
wine from grapes was forbidden, and that it was forbidden to get 
thoroughly drunk on other things but not to drink them. "So drunk as 
not to know the earth from the sky or a man from a woman."

I don't know what the range of opinions among the Shia was.
-- 
David/Cariadoc
www.daviddfriedman.com